While running for the United States Senate against Stephen Douglas in 1858, Abraham Lincoln stopped in many small towns, including communities in Hancock County, and came to LaHarpe on October 23, 1858. He entered town from the west in a phaeton borrowed from Daniel Bainter, encountered some dissenters along his parade route, and spoke at the Methodist Episcopal Church, the so-called Little Church Around the Corner, at 102 North First Street. The original church, built in 1848, held 250 people, was used until the late 1890's, was then moved to the south side of the second block on East Main, and served as a blacksmith shop until the late 1960's; its pulpit remains in the present church building. Lincoln spent the night at the King Home at 108 South C Street, built in 1857 by Dr. N.B. Butler, and may have visited that evening with cousins from Fountain Green. He lost the Senate race but was elected the sixteenth President of the United States in 1860. The account also traces local Lincoln family connections: Hezekiah Lincoln, son of the President's first cousin Abraham of nearby Fountain Green, is buried in LaHarpe Cemetery with his wife Phoebe and his younger unmarried brother Nicholas; he was a farmer, merchant, and reportedly LaHarpe's first resident attorney, and in 1858 was a twenty-nine-year-old bachelor still living in Fountain Green. Hezekiah and Nicholas were descendants of Mordecai Lincoln, brother of Thomas Lincoln, the President's father, and local tradition holds that more of President Lincoln's relatives are buried in Saint Simon's Cemetery, ten miles south of LaHarpe and one mile east of Fountain Green, than in any other one cemetery.