FACSIMILE OF AN ELECTION RETURN WRITTEN BY LINCOLN AS CLERK IN 1832.—NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.
From the original now on file in the county clerk’s office, Springfield, Illinois. The first civil office Lincoln ever held was that of election clerk, and the return made by him, of which a facsimile is here presented, was his first official document. All the men whose names appear on this election return are now dead, except William McNeely, now residing at Petersburg. John Clary lived at Clary’s Grove; John R. Herndon was “Row” Herndon, whose store Berry and Lincoln purchased, and at whose house Lincoln for a time boarded; Baxter Berry was a relative of Lincoln’s partner in the grocery business, and Edmund Greer was a school-teacher, and afterwards a justice of the peace and a surveyor; James Rutledge was the keeper of the Rutledge tavern and the father of Ann Rutledge; Hugh Armstrong was one of the numerous Armstrong family; “Uncle Jimmy” White lived on a farm five miles from New Salem, and died about thirty years ago, in the eightieth year of his age; William Green was father of William G. Greene, Lincoln’s associate in Offutt’s store; and as to Bowling Green, more is said elsewhere. In the following three or four years, very few elections were held in New Salem at which Lincoln was not a clerk. It is a somewhat singular fact that Lincoln, though clerk of this election, is not recorded as voting. ]
Among the other persons yet living who were residents with Lincoln of New Salem or its near neighborhood, are Mrs. Parthenia W. Hill, aged seventy-nine years, widow of Samuel Hill, the New Salem merchant; James McGrady Rutledge, aged eighty-one years; John Potter, aged eighty-seven years; and Thomas Watkins, aged seventy-one years—all now living at Petersburg, Illinois. Mrs. Hill, a woman of more than ordinary intelligence, did not become a resident of New Salem until 1835, the year in which she was married. Lincoln had then gone out of business, but she knew much of his store. “Berry and Lincoln,” she says, “did not keep any dry goods. They had a grocery, and I have always understood they sold whiskey.” Mr. Rutledge, a nephew of James Rutledge the tavern-keeper, has a vivid recollection of the store. He says: “I have been in Berry and Lincoln’s store many a time. The building was a frame—one of the few frame buildings in New Salem. There were two rooms, and in the small back room they kept their whiskey. They had pretty much everything, except dry goods—sugar, coffee, some crockery, a few pairs of shoes (not many), some farming implements, and the like. Whiskey, of course, was a necessary part of their stock. I remember one transaction in particular which I had with them. I sold the firm a load of wheat, which they turned over to the mill.” Mr. Potter, who remembers the morning when Lincoln, then a stranger on his way to New Salem, stopped at his father’s house and ate breakfast, knows less about the store, but says: “It was a grocery, and they sold whiskey, of course.” Thomas Watkins says that the store contained “a little candy, tobacco, sugar, and coffee, and the like;” though Mr. Watkins, being then a young boy, and living a mile in the country, was not a frequent visitor at the store.