Chester County holds a unique place in the annals of
Lincoln lore. Indeed, the first biography of our 16th president was published in West Chester on February 11th, 1860, by the
Chester County Times, a local Republican weekly that was owned by Samuel Downing and located at 14 W. Market Street.
At the time, 14 W. Market was known as the Everhart Building. Today, the building is numbered 28 W. Market, and is named the Lincoln Building.
The story behind why Lincoln's biography was published in
West Chester is nothing short of remarkable. One of Lincoln's friends in Illinois was
Jesse W. Fell, a native of
Chester County who settled in Illinois in 1835. Fell met Lincoln while the two were staying at the same boarding house, and they struck up a lifelong friendship.
In 1858, when Lincoln ran for senate against Senator Stephen Douglas, Fell urged him to debate Douglas over the senator's signature piece of legislation, the
Kansas-Nebraska Act. Lincoln thought the idea was a good one, and he challenged Douglas to a series of debates.
Douglas accepted, and during the summer and fall of 1858, Lincoln and Douglas sparred over the Kansas-Nebraska Act in a series of now legendary public exchanges known as the “
Lincoln-Douglas debates.”
When Lincoln started being mentioned as a candidate for president in 1860, Fell worried that his friend, still unknown outside of Illinois, would have trouble getting votes back East. He and an Illinois newspaper publisher named Edward Lewis urged Lincoln to write some autobiographical notes that could be used to introduce him as a candidate for president to Eastern voters.
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| The Lincoln Building |
Lewis's brother, Joseph J. Lewis, was a prominent attorney who lived in West Chester, and was well-known for his antislavery views. His office was located at the Everhart Building, which as the reader will recall, also housed the Chester County Times, owned by Samuel Downing.
Sometime in early 1860, Joseph Lewis and Downing received a three-page, handwritten biographical sketch from Abraham Lincoln. The sketch was used as the primary source material for the biography.
Lincoln's original notes to Lewis and Downing read as follows:
"I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, KY. My parents were born in Virginia, of undistinguished families -- second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some whom now reside in Adams and others in Macon Counties, Ill."
"My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Va., to Kentucky, about 1781 or '82, where, a year or two later, he was killed by Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pa.. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham and the like."
"My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and he grew up literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Ind., in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond "readin', writin' and cipherin'" to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education."
"Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write and cipher to the Rule of Three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity."
"I was raised to farm-work, which I continued till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, and passed the first year in Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard, County, where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk War, and I was elected a captain of volunteers -- a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went through the campaign, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832), and was beaten -- the only time I have ever been beaten by the people. The next and three succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate afterwards. During this legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I was once elected to the Lower House of Congress, but was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849-1854, both inclusive, practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in politics, and generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known."
"If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet four inches nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and gray eyes. No other marks or brands recollected."
Yours very truly,
A. Lincoln
