Nance Legins-Costley, born in December 1813 in Kaskaskia, Illinois, and later married in Pekin, Illinois, on October 15, 1840, and William Henry Costley, born in 1840 in Pekin, Illinois, later married in Davenport, Iowa, in 1880 and again on October 18, 1883, and died in Rochester, Minnesota, on October 1, 1888, were Pekin residents and the first enslaved individuals emancipated by Abraham Lincoln.