Lincoln Slept Here

When Abraham Lincoln rode into Pontiac on May 18 and 19, 1840, for the first term of circuit court in Livingston County, he found only a few cabins scattered among bushes and stayed overnight in a log cabin on this riverbank built by C. H. Perry as both a store and dwelling. Perry had hauled the first stock of goods from Pekin to Pontiac by ox team in 1836, and in 1837 he joined James McKee and Jesse W. Fell in giving bond as sureties that town proprietors Henry Weed and Lucius and Seth Young would fulfill their contract with the county in return for Pontiac being named county seat. The proprietors promised $3,000, a two-hundred-foot-square block for a courthouse, an acre within thirty rods for a jail and pen for stray domestic animals, and a substantial wagon bridge across the Vermilion River at this point. Lincoln arrived on horseback after a spring shower had drenched him, while Judge Treat and other attorneys, including David Davis and Stephen A. Douglas, traveled from Bloomington by buggy and horseback over the open prairie along what later became known as the Pontiac Trail and much later Route 66. In 1838, Perry and McKee built Pontiac's first sawmill, and Perry also kept court records for a time. Later, S. C. Ladd bought Perry's store stock, formed a partnership with Willet Gray, and purchased McKee's interest in the sawmill while Perry acted as the capitalist. Perry also brought to Pontiac the first piano, the first store-carpet, and the first looking-glass, and his piano remained the county's only instrument of its kind for many years until he moved to Iowa and took it with him.

Pontiac, Illinois · United States