Receiving Vault

The remains of Abraham Lincoln and his son William Wallace "Willie" rested in this receiving vault from May 4, 1865 to December 21, 1865. The vault was built after Oak Ridge Cemetery's dedication in 1860 and served as a temporary tomb while burial plans were made or when frozen ground prevented digging a grave, and it most likely had been used for interments before 1865. On May 4, 1865, nineteen days after his death, President Abraham Lincoln's body was placed here along with that of Willie, who had died at age eleven in the White House on February 20, 1862, and whose casket had been carried to Springfield on the funeral train of the assassinated president. On December 21, 1865, the two caskets were moved to a temporary vault about halfway up the hillside. A week earlier, the remains of another Lincoln son, Edward "Eddie" Baker, had been transferred there. In 1871, all three were finally interred in the Lincoln Tomb at the top of the hill. According to cemetery records, the receiving vault was used at least twelve times from 1866 to 1873, when its use was discontinued. Conveyed to the State of Illinois in 1846, it is now administered by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency as part of the Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site.

Springfield, Illinois · United States