On February 14, 1861, Abraham Lincoln stepped from a train at Cadiz Junction while traveling from his home in Illinois to the nation’s capital, where on March 4th he would become the sixteenth President. A breakfast stop for the President-elect, Cadiz Junction found him well served by hotel host James Cady. Lincoln later greeted a respectful crowd but declined to make a formal speech because he felt “too full for utterance.” He then resumed a journey from which he would know no return. Cadiz Junction was also a busy railroad meeting point where, in 1854, the Cadiz Branch first connected with the Steubenville & Indiana Railroad. Those early lines, financed by the townships they crossed and advanced largely by Harrison Countians Daniel Kilgore, James Means, and Thomas Jewett, long remained profitable parts of the Pennsylvania Railroad system.
