All visitors are encouraged to support the park through donations that can be made in the Visitor Center and in the backyard of the Lincoln Home after your tour.
Parking is in the visitor parking lot on a daily basis. The fee is $2 per hour payable at a self-operated fee machine.
In the Visitor Center you will also find orientation film, temporary exhibits, a Museum Shop, Springfield area information and restrooms.
Exhibits located within the historic Lincoln neighborhood include:
• "What a Pleasant Home Abe Lincoln Has" Exhibit in the Dean House that focuses on the Lincoln Family's life in Springfield
• "If These Walls Could Talk" Exhibit in the Arnold House that focuses on historic preservation.
The historic Lincoln neighborhood consists of four blocks in which you can stroll through to see the houses.
Abraham Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois sits between two tributaries of the Sangamon River, with Spring Creek to the north and west and Sugar Creek to the south and east. Abraham Lincoln and his family lived in the house at Eighth and Jackson Streets for 17 years.
The Lincoln Home National Historic Site is a 12.28-acre unit of the National Park System. The Lincoln Home was constructed in 1839 and restored to its 1860 appearance as part of the Site's Historic Zone that includes 17 other historic structures. The entire historic zone, especially the area immediately adjacent to the Lincoln home, is being restored to the appearance of the neighborhood as the Lincolns would have known it.
By 1860, there were five in the Lincoln family living in the house, Abraham, Mary, Willie and Tad, Robert was away at preparatory school for much of that year.
Abraham Lincoln was born and raised in a one-room log cabin and not very well educated. His wife, Mary Todd Lincoln was born and raised in a fourteen-room house and was educated throughout her life. They were of opposite backgrounds, but despite there opposite backgrounds, they met one night at a dance in Springfield, Illinois and began courting.
Mary's eldest sister, Elizabeth and her husband, Ninian disapproved of Abraham. The young couple broke up and avoided each other for over a year until mutual friends brought them back together. They dated in secret and were married on November 4, 1842.
After their marriage the couple went to a single room on the second floor of a rooming house where they spent their first year of marriage and where Mary gave birth to their first child, Robert Todd Lincoln. They rented a small house and then purchased their first and only house. Abraham, Mary and Robert moved into a one-and-a-half-story cottage, which they expanded into two stories and continued to raise their family for seventeen years.
Source: The Lincoln Historic Site Online
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© 2007 Connie Limon All Rights Reserved
