Celebrating Lincoln: Honoring our 16th president on his 200th birthday

Travel the Lincoln Highway. Tap your feet to Civil War-era music. Take a break from the Obama-McCain presidential campaign, and hear Abraham Lincoln debate Sen. Stephen A. Douglas over the issues tearing apart the nation in 1858.

Those are just some of the things the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Coalition of DuPage County is urging area residents to do to help celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of our 16th president next Feb. 12.

From Batavia to McHenry to Aurora or Richmond, you'll find a touch of Lincoln and those intricately involved in his life across northern Illinois.

The Glen Ellyn-based group is one of many Illinois groups that has worked to create ways to honor Lincoln. "Each community is going to have their own thing, but they are banding together to pay for it," said Jean Jeske, coalition member and publicist for the Glen Ellyn Historical Society.

Along the way, they've found lots to know ... and some things to discount.

That rumor that Lincoln actually slept at Stacy's Tavern in Glen Ellyn?

Not true, Jeske said.

"Lincoln did not visit Stacy's Tavern. Lincoln did not visit any specific spot in Glen Ellyn. He came through on the train," she said.

Did you know, however, that a Richmand man, James Wallace Coquillette, was a sharpshooter sent to help hunt down John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln's assassination? Or that the former president's chief rival, Stephen A. Douglas, made a mark in McHenry?

And how about the stories about Mary Lincoln's 1875 stay at a Batavia sanitarium after the death of Robert Lincoln, her oldest and only surviving son, succeeded in having her declared insane because of her erratic behavior?

She won her release after five months at Bellevue Place sanitarium which still stands in Batavia where it's been converted to apartments.

The bed and dresser she used during her stay, the log where the doctor made notes on her condition and other artifacts from the sanitarium may be seen at Batavia Depot Museum.

Mary Lincoln also is reputed to have visited St. Charles and stayed at the Howard House Hotel.

The hotel owner's wife was a medium and Mary reportedly wanted to contact her dead husband and sons, said Julie Burke, curator of the St. Charles Heritage Center.

"The story is Mary Todd came and stayed under an assumed name of Mrs. May," Burke said.

The story hasn't been confirmed, Burke said, but the hotel building still stands at the corner of Illinois and Third streets and has been converted into apartments.

It also is possible that Lincoln himself visited St. Charles before he was elected president, Burke said.

"Supposedly he had some friends in town," she said.

The Richmond man who was "an unerring shot" according to Nancy Fike, executive director of the McHenry County Historical Society, also was known as a loyal friend, she said. Coquillette has kin still living in Richmond today.

Lincoln, as you may or may not know, had extremely large hands after his many years of chopping wood. The McHenry history group features a model of that hand -- "It will drawf yours," Fike promises -- in its history bus, remodeled in honor of Lincoln. You can tour it at the Algonquin Townships "Touch a Truck" event from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. xx, Sept. 4 at the township.

Lincoln once also visited Aurora where he had a law client named Charles Hoyt. A letter Lincoln wrote to Hoyt is in the possession of the Aurora Historical Society and copies of it may be seen in the files, said John Jaros, executive director of the historical society.

Lincoln is known to have visited the Hoyt store on River Street and to have stayed at the Wilder House on North River Street, Jaros said.

Lincoln also likely would have had political supporters in Aurora.

An 1854 convention held there set the anti-slavery tone of the Republican Party that Lincoln led to presidential victory in 1860.

"Aurora did have some strong pockets of abolitionist and anti-slavery people," Jaros said.

Lincoln may not have spent much time in DuPage County, but that doesn't mean his influence isn't felt there or evidence of his presence can't be seen.

When Lincoln was in the Illinois Legislature, he joined with Naperville founder Joe Naper, then a state representative, in supporting the separation of DuPage from Cook County. Since Lincoln was a Whig and Naper a Jacksonian Democrat, the future president had to cross party lines to support the legislation that created a new county.

Naper also switched sides to support the Whigs in moving the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield - so there likely was some vote trading going on, said Bryan Ogg, research associate at Naper Settlement.

Local lore also has it that Lincoln once gave an impromptu speech from the roof of the Pre-Emption House in Naperville.

A painting depicting the event done by the late Naperville artist Les Schrader hangs in the re-created Pre-Emption House Visitor Center on settlement property.

One problem: Lincoln probably never gave that speech, Ogg said.

The settlement has in its collection black lacy gloves and a black bonnet that a Naperville resident named Maria Nye claimed to have worn when she witnessed the event. Research shows Maria would have been only 12 to 14 years old at time, Ogg said.

"It seems unlikely she would have worn widow weeds," he said.

The famed Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 didn't win Lincoln a seat in the U.S. Senate, but they did turn him into a national figure. The once popular local legend that one of those seven debates took place in West Chicago has long since been debunked, said Sally DeFauw, curator of the West Chicago City Museum.

The myth took hold in the 1920s when a local newspaper ran an account by a West Chicago woman who claimed to have witnessed the debate and a dozen other locals signed affidavits swearing it took place.

A marker was created and placed on a large rock near the site.

The tattered monument marker declaring the debate took place on Aug. 28, 1858, is now in the museum's storage.

Although the famed debate did not occur, Douglas is known to have spoken in West Chicago on that date and Lincoln may have stumped there during the campaign.

"We know Lincoln came through here because he had to make train connections," DeFauw said.

The former president was not known to have visited McHenry but his chief rival Stephan A. Douglas made quite an impression when he gave new meaning to a stump speech, standing atop a whiskey barrel for two hours as he campaigned for Congress in 1838. "He was so convincing, he got a lot of people to vote Democratic for one of the first times in this county," Fike said of what's traditionally been Republican turf.

The site of that speech? BB's Tavern, or what's now known as the Riverside Hotel on the northeast corner of Riverside Drive and Route 120, just east of the Fox River.

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