In 1851, when the Illinois Central Railroad began surveying land in Union County, Jonesboro was considered the logical place for the tracks, but its leaders declined to pay the required $50 surveying fee. Jonesboro businessman Winstead Davis then paid for the survey across his land east of Jonesboro, donated thirty-seven acres in 1852, and named the new town site Anna after his wife. For almost twenty years the depot sign read Jonesboro Station before it was finally changed to Anna in 1873. In 1858, when Abraham Lincoln came to Union County for his third debate with Stephen Douglas, he traveled by railroad from Centralia with his friend D.L. Phillips of Anna, a land agent for the Illinois Central Railroad and one of about fifty Republican voters in the county. Lincoln stayed two nights at the Phillips home on South Main Street, visited the Union House Hotel in Jonesboro after supper, and on the morning before the debate rode through the county with Phillips and Phillips' 11-year-old son, Judson, telling funny stories as they went. They saw the debate site in Jonesboro and probably the new courthouse, then traveled west to the grounds where, twenty years earlier, thousands of Cherokee Indians had camped during the Trail of Tears while waiting for ice on the Mississippi River to thaw. After the debate, Lincoln is said to have received visitors on the porch of the Phillips home. The railroad became the key to shipping Southern Illinois fruits, vegetables, flowers, lumber, and livestock to urban markets and helped end the area's isolation, affecting the local economy more than almost anything except the county's natural attributes and the people's work ethic and tenacity. Because of the railroad and Anna's proximity to Cairo, Anna became a rendezvous point for Illinois Civil War regiments, where thousands of soldiers assembled, camped, and trained, and General Grant spent five days mustering in troops. In the early 1900's, Anna native John Pelley rose from working as a local baggage boy to become president of the Association of American Railroads, and the new brick depot bore his name.