Abraham Lincoln laid out the original sixty blocks of Petersburg, Illinois, between November 1835 and February 1836 after Peter Lukins and George Warburton had first laid out a few lots for a new town in 1832 and chosen its name through a game of Old Sledge, which Lukins won. Lukins and Warburton sold their stakes within a year, and Lincoln, then a young Sangamon County deputy surveyor, undertook the town's first detailed survey in 1835. Because Petersburg offered better access to the Sangamon River than New Salem, cabins and businesses began to appear there and New Salem was abandoned. In 1839, the northwest portion of Sangamon County became Menard County, with Petersburg as the county seat. Lincoln often stayed in Petersburg while riding circuit during the 1840s and 1850s, and in 1858, while speaking there, he said that his wife "...insists that he will be a Senator and President too. Just think of such a sucker as me as President." The survey began in November 1835, about two months after the death of Ann Rutledge, was interrupted by Lincoln's attendance at the state legislative session in Vandalia during December 1835 and January 1836, and was completed on February 17, 1836; he also surveyed seven additional blocks north of the public square for John Bennett. The first known permanent structure in Petersburg was a cabin erected by Peter Lukins in 1832 and later known as the Bennett Inn, where Lincoln stayed while surveying in the area. After surveying during the day, he retired to his room to draft his plats, using a drawing board, a T-square, and triangles to lay out the future town, carefully inking lines, labeling streets, and using a wadded ball of stale bread as an ink blotter.