The flatboat crew had made quite an impression in New Salem on the way downriver, and the community had good cause to remember the tall, gangly young man for his quick-minded innovations. Even though the water in the Sangamon had been unusually high all spring, by the time the flatboat was ready at the end of April or early May, the river had started to drop. Somewhat dramatically, the Lincoln flatboat got stuck on the New Salem milldam. That mishap could have meant the end of the journey and Offutt’s investment, save for Lincoln’s quick thinking.
As the boat teetered on the dam, crew and community began removing the cargo barrels. As the load shifted, the stern gradually started to tilt backward under the weight of the splashed-on water. Lincoln realized that this water could be the engine of their progress off the dam. He quickly stopped the unloading process and shifted several barrels to the front of the boat. He cut a branch into a wooden peg. Then, borrowing an auger from the town’s cooper, he bored a hole in the front of the boat and quickly shifted the remaining barrels to the front. The water flowed from the stern and out of the hole in the bow. Just before the boat was ready to slide off the dam, Lincoln hammered the peg home, stopping up the hole, and they continued on their way. From the sound of it, this adventure was the talk of New Salem residents for years.
In 1830 New Salem was still a very new community. Millwrights John Cameron from Georgia and his uncle James Rutledge from North Carolina arrived in 1828. They planned to anchor the new village with combination grist-and-saw mill. In their vision New Salem would be a commercial village serving the needs of the rapidly expanding farm community. Here, farmers from Wolf, Sugar Grove, Concord, Sandridge, Little Grove, Athens, Irish Grove, Indian Point, Rock Creek, and Clary’s Grove could barter farm produce or purchase manufactured goods, sugar, spices, molasses, and even brandy or whiskey.
To engage the power for the mill, Cameron and Rutledge enlisted the help of these neighbors to dam the Sangamon River. They built pens out of logs and lowered them into the river. They began filling the pens with rocks. A year and a thousand wagonloads of rocks later, the mill stood on log and rock pillars out into the river, fully enclosed and ready to grind corn or wheat and saw lumber. Rutledge also operated a tavern and inn for the comfort of travelers along the beaten path to Springfield, Peoria, and other communities. Others in town took in boarders.
More merchants and tradesmen moved to the area and set up shop along the L-shaped Main Street ready to do business serving the extended community of settlers and farmers. In 1829 Samuel Hill and James McNamar opened the first store selling groceries such as tea, coffee, sugar, salt—essential for preserving meats—and whiskey. They also stocked dry goods such as blue calico, brown muslin, men’s straw hats and ladies hats, too, homemade jeans and gloves, and other items of “ornamental feminine apparel.”
Cooper Henry Onstot moved from Sugar Grove and built a residence and shop to make barrels, essential for storing and shipping farm produce. Philamon Morris set up a tannery. Shoemakers Alexander Ferguson and Peter Lukins and hatmaker Martin Waddel, who worked with wool, rabbit, and other animal furs, filled some of the clothing needs of the community. Robert Johnston, wheelwright and cabinetmaker, built the means for area residents to make their own clothes, spinning wheels and looms, as well as furniture. Samuel Hill installed a mechanical wool-carding mill, turning sheep shearings into wool. Dr. John Allen, graduate of Dartmouth College Medical School, came west to seek a better climate for his health and set up practice from his home on Main Street.
Other merchants opened groceries, a nineteenth-century designation for stores selling liquor by the drink and bottle, and general stores. At one time between 1831 and 1833, there were four such stores. Lincoln was involved in two of them before they “winked out” in the competition and lack of ready money among the customers.
James McNamar summed up life in New Salem: “An abundance of the necessities of life, its luxuries unknown or uncared for. Lavish hospitality and brotherly love abounded and everywhere the latch string was hung out for all comers.”
Just as steamboats bridged utility between the practical flatboat and the soaring tall sailing ship, market and resource towns like New Salem filled the middle ground of progress between farms and sophisticated cities. This was the spot where things happened; it was the hub of the wheel of commerce. It was the perfect place for an engaging young man to interact with people and information. Abraham was off the farm and in his own place of higher learning and vital experiences.
Today we pass right by towns on our highway journeys, hardly noting their existence beyond a quick stop for refueling. In 1830s Illinois, travelers became part of the community for a few hours or a night at a friendly break in the prairie and forest. Those from the east came to town on the ferry across the Sangamon, while those from communities to the south, west, and north rode horses, stages, or wagons or even walked.
New Salem stores were designed as gathering spots to talk politics or engage in a game of checkers or cards. Covered front porches provided shelter from the sun. The long main street was the perfect spot for horse racing. Old-timers remembered the barbecue pit behind Hill’s store and the cock-fighting pit located on the hillside outside of town.
Modern archaeology has revealed a site that suggests the footprint of a whiskey-making still. Another area where community, and possibly even commercial, hog butchering took place showed its footprint, too. One old-time New Salem resident remembered a large hog-stationing pen near the area. Three distinctive sections of the uncovered site reveal this complex fall activity, and the importance of “using everything but the squeal.” After the hog—often weighing more than two hundred pounds—was dispatched, its carcass was plunged into a trough of scalding water to loosen the bristles from its hide. After the bristles, useful for making into brushes, were scraped off by hand, the carcass was hung up by its hind feet. Then, men cut it into pieces sorted for packing into barrels for salted “pickled pork” or rubbing with dry seasonings to be hung up in the smokehouse. This was such a profitable enterprise that Dr. Allen asked his farmer patients to pay him in butchered hogs, which he would “cure into hams and bacon, pack in hogsheads, and ship via Beardstown to the St. Louis market.”
Those modern excavations have uncovered other important tangible shards of evidence from the community’s past. Although the homes and stores were log cabins, they had whitewashed, plastered interior walls. Families ate off of shell-edged Queensware plates and drank from glassware as well as tin cups. Storekeepers’ families grew their own vegetables and had fruit trees. They raised chickens and stabled cows and horses.
Abraham quickly became a valued member of the community. He slept in the store and took his meals boarding with a number of different families, but there are few details of what he ate. N. W. Branson reported to William Herndon that Lincoln “was a fast eater, though not a hearty one,” and that he liked “bread and honey.” Another old New Salem neighbor agreed. “He was not very particular in what he Eaten [sic] he was fond of Pop Corn I remember.”
Lincoln was always ready with a story or joke. And because he could read and write, neighbors called upon him to write up agreements or to witness legal documents. Among the people of New Salem Lincoln found an academy of learning. He borrowed their books, read their old newspapers—and as postmaster he knew which papers came into town and when—and he peppered them with questions. Lincoln took full advantage of these New Salem resources to study and achieve an education in literature, poetry, grammar, mathematics, surveying, and the law. When business was slow in the Offutt store and then the market he owned in partnership with William F. Berry, Lincoln stretched out on the counter and poked his nose into a book. He discussed Robert Burns’s poetry and William Shakespeare’s plays as he cast fishing lines with Jack Kelso; he was a character who was more at home in field and stream than any man, but who could “recite Shakespeare and Burns by the hour.” Justice of the Peace Bowling Green loaned law books and encouraged Abraham in his s
tudies. When Lincoln was appointed deputy county surveyor, schoolmaster Mentor Graham is said to have helped him work through the problems in Flint’s System of Geometry and Trigonometry Together with a Treatise on Surveying as he mastered the skills essential for his new profession in just six weeks. He took part in the Debating Society organized by James Rutledge.
Denton Offutt wasn’t around New Salem much; it appears he spent his time chasing opportunities in Springfield and other towns. Always looking for a way to make more money, he hired the exclusive use of the Cameron-Rutledge grinding mill. Lincoln spent time overseeing the operation of the mill as it ground corn and wheat. In the spring of 1832, Offutt gathered up what cash he could and, leaving his creditors in the lurch, simply disappeared. Lincoln managed the declining store until the stock was sold to pay off the debts, and then it “just petered out.”
In March 1832, Lincoln declared his candidacy for representative to the Illinois General Assembly. In his “Communication to the People of Sangamo County,” he addressed the need for “internal improvements”—roads, cleared waterways, and “rail roads.” He drew upon the year’s experiences, making a comprehensive analysis of the situation. “I have given as particular attention to the state of the water in this river, as any other person in the country.” Lincoln, twenty-three years old, was poised for the possibility of loss. “Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition … I have no other so great as to be esteemed by my fellow men … I am young and unknown to many of you.… If the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.” Losing this election, he was elected for the next term in 1834.
A few years ago I happened on a lively little book printed in 1927. Lincoln at New Salem, commissioned by The Old Salem Lincoln League, is a collection of all the memories from New Salem residents and their descendants. One of the first pages is a charming hand-drawn bird’s-eye view of New Salem. Two dozen houses or other features are illustrated, and they just hint at the complexity of life in the bustling community. Missing are the barns, smokehouses, and privies. It looks simple, but it’s not.
You can’t see the books in people’s homes or the newspapers from Springfield, Lexington, and St. Louis arriving at the postmaster’s. Understanding life in New Salem, Lincoln’s rapidly developing intellect, the world that opened up before him, and the experiences he sought requires some serious chewing.
Innovations, inventions, and information continued to follow the north-to-south river path that the young Lincoln took. By the 1840s the Springfield newspapers advertised the arrival of “barrels of fresh oranges and lemons.” “Internal improvements,” canals, and railroads pushed westward, and by the 1850s railroad tracks crossed the rivers.
The saleratus biscuit recipe that follows is the perfect edible metaphor for New Salem and Lincoln’s dynamic change during the six years he lived there. The recipe looks basic: flour, a bit of butter, some boiling water. Yet combined with the magic alchemy of baking saleratus (baking soda) and sour milk, these simple ingredients are transformed into a chewy, delicious biscuit. It is complex and unforgettable—kind of like Abraham Lincoln.
Oh, and one more thing. The New Salem milldam incident with the flatboat remained in Lincoln’s mind. In 1849, eighteen years after the incident, he received a U.S. patent for his device for “buoying vessels over shoals.” Lincoln is the only U.S. president to receive a patent for an invention.
NEW ORLEANS CURRY POWDER
Before steamships, canals, and railroads, residents of coastal cities from New England to New Orleans enjoyed a complex variety of foods and seasonings unavailable in the developing center of the nation. There are scores of recipes for curry powder in period books and magazines. This curry powder is mild and goes well with chicken, lamb, or vegetables.
2 tablespoons ground turmeric
2 tablespoons ground coriander
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons ground ginger
2 tablespoons freshly grated or ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons ground mace
2 tablespoons ground cayenne pepper
Mix the spices together. Store in a sealed jar. Curry powder will keep in a cool, dark place for weeks. Use as you would any curry powder.
Makes 1 scant cup curry powder
ADAPTED FROM “CURRY POWDER,” MARY RANDOLPH, THE VIRGINIA HOUSE-WIFE OR, METHODICAL COOK, 1824.
NEW ORLEANS CHICKEN CURRY
3 tablespoons flour
1 to 3 teaspoons Curry Powder
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 tablespoons butter or olive oil
2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken (breast and/or thigh meat), cut into 2-inch pieces
2 cloves garlic, minced
Juice from 1 lemon or orange
2 cups prepared rice, to serve
Put the flour and curry powder in a pint jar with a lid. Add 1 cup of the chicken broth, tighten lid, and shake well to blend. Set aside.
Heat the butter or oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the chicken pieces and cook until browned on one side, about 5 minutes. Turn the chicken pieces over and add garlic. Continue cooking until the chicken is browned and garlic is tender, about 5 minutes. Shake the jar of curry/broth blend once again and pour slowly into the frying pan. Add the remaining 1 cup chicken broth and stir until sauce is thickened. Cover and simmer about 10 minutes until meat is fork tender. Stir in lemon or orange juice. Serve over rice.
Makes 6 to 8 servings
ADAPTED FROM “TO MAKE A DISH OF CURRY AFTER THE EAST-INDIAN MANNER,” MARY RANDOLPH, THE VIRGINIA HOUSE-WIFE OR, METHODICAL COOK, 1824.
NEW SALEM SALERATUS BISCUITS
As pioneer settlements became villages and towns, farmers began planting more wheat. Wheat breads and biscuits took their place on tables where just a few years earlier cornmeal was the primary bread grain. Saleratus, an early form of baking soda, worked with the sour milk to make a light, chewy, and delicious biscuit.
⅔ cup milk
2 teaspoons white vinegar
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon butter
¼ cup boiling water
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Lightly grease a baking sheet. Combine milk and vinegar in a glass measuring cup and set aside to sour, about 5 minutes. Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt in a mixing bowl. Add the butter to the boiling water to melt and then stir into the flour mixture. Then stir in the sour milk. Stir with a fork and then knead briefly. You may need to add a bit more milk or flour to make a dough that is firm enough to work and not sticky. Break off pieces about 1 inch in diameter and place on the prepared baking sheet. Bake until browned, about 15 to 20 minutes.
Makes 16 biscuits
RE-CREATED FROM PERIOD SOURCES.
BACON AND BLACK HAWK
In April 1832, Abraham Lincoln was just twenty-three years old. After about nine months in New Salem, Denton Offutt’s store was nearly out of business. Soon Lincoln would be out of a job. Frontier events provided an opportunity. Like every able-bodied man, Lincoln was required to drill in the militia twice a year or pay a fine of one dollar. So, on April 19, when word reached the folks in New Salem that Governor John Reynolds called for volunteers to protect the citizens from a feared massacre at the hands of aggrieved Winnebago chief Black Hawk, Lincoln was ready to go.
Later, during his only term as a U.S. congressman, Abraham Lincoln used fighting words on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to describe his military career. In a July 27, 1848, speech he confronted General Lewis Cass, the Democratic Party candidate in the presidential campaign, on the extension of slavery, the overuse of the presidential veto, and the waging of an unnecessary war, unleashing his strongest volleys on Cass’s claimed military successes. The Lincoln-supported Whig candidate, General Zachary Taylor, had a proven army career; Cass apparen
tly spent some of his time during the War of 1812 foraging behind the lines. Using his skill at turning personal anecdote toward sharply honed argument, Lincoln compared his own service in the Black Hawk War to Cass’s battle experiences.
“If General Cass went in advance of me in picking huckleberries, I guess I surpassed him in charges upon the wild onions. If he saw any live, fighting Indians, it was more than I did, but I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes and although I never fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often hungry.”
This was one of the few times Lincoln publicly mentioned his military service. History is fortunate that George M. Harrison served with him as an Illinois Militia volunteer during the Black Hawk War, and we are equally fortunate that William Herndon, Lincoln’s Springfield law partner, wrote to everyone he could think of as he documented Lincoln’s life in the years immediately after his death. Herndon received three lengthy letters from Harrison, filled with chatty details. Harrison described meals and cooking methods so well he could have written a cookery book. Harrison even recalled their shared culinary adventures in a letter he sent to Lincoln in May 1860, congratulating him on the Republican Party presidential nomination. Harrison wrote of their friendship forged “when we ground our coffee in the same tin cup with the hatchet handle—baked our bread on our ramrods around the same fire—ate our fried meat off the same piece of elm bark.”
Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen Page 8