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Putnam ties to Lincoln detailed in talk about Weik
While Illinois is the Land of Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky and spent his boyhood and a quarter of his life in southern Indiana.
But Lincoln the man -- perhaps the ultimate name among U.S. presidents -- is known to have had more than one connection to Putnam County. Yes, Abe Lincoln. Honest.
"As far as I know, he's the only president whose name greets you when you enter three states," speaker Ted Jacobi, a 2010 DePauw University alum, told an audience Saturday morning at the Putnam County Museum.
Jacobi's graduate thesis focused on Greencastle resident and author/historian Jesse Weik who with Lincoln's former law partner William Herndon collaborated on "Herndon's Lincoln," the definitive biography of the 16th president first published in 1889.
Putnam County residents have long shared tales of Lincoln coming and going along the National Road (now U.S. 40), including one in which he reportedly observed a fine-looking garden near Reelsville, commenting with something like, "My, what a pleasant garden," only to have that comment later anoint the area as Pleasant Gardens.
Longtime residents also agree that with all the time Lincoln spent in this section of the country, it's difficult to imagine that he didn't speak in Greencastle at least one time or another as he came and went.
Another local LinPutnam ties to Lincoln detailed in talk about Weik
By ERIC BERNSEE
Editor
While Illinois is the Land of Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky and spent his boyhood and a quarter of his life in southern Indiana.
But Lincoln the man -- perhaps the ultimate name among U.S. presidents -- is known to have had more than one connection to Putnam County. Yes, Abe Lincoln. Honest.
"As far as I know, he's the only president whose name greets you when you enter three states," speaker Ted Jacobi, a 2010 DePauw University alum, told an audience Saturday morning at the Putnam County Museum.
Jacobi's graduate thesis focused on Greencastle resident and author/historian Jesse Weik who with Lincoln's former law partner William Herndon collaborated on "Herndon's Lincoln," the definitive biography of the 16th president first published in 1889.
Putnam County residents have long shared tales of Lincoln coming and going along the National Road (now U.S. 40), including one in which he reportedly observed a fine-looking garden near Reelsville, commenting with something like, "My, what a pleasant garden," only to have that comment later anoint the area as Pleasant Gardens.
Longtime residents also agree that with all the time Lincoln spent in this section of the country, it's difficult to imagine that he didn't speak in Greencastle at least one time or another as he came and went.
Another local Lincoln tale concerns him stopping at the elegant residence on the south side of U.S. 40 at the Putnam-Hendricks County line. Now known as Rising Hall, it was then owned by a supposed Lincoln associate who sold mules to the U.S. Army.
When the late Walt Prosser did the fabulous restoration of that home, he claimed Lincoln had stopped and stayed there a few times while en route between Illinois and Washington. Unfortunately, he never signed the bedroom wall or left any physical evidence that "Abe Lincoln slept here."
But Jacobi offered plenty of testimony that Weik, an Indiana Asbury College (now DePauw University) graduate whose family owned a store on the courthouse square, not only wrote the majority of "Herndon's Lincoln" but for years kept stored in the Greencastle residence (now Bittles and Hurt Funeral Home) he shared with Professor John Clark Ridpath, the extensive records and research Herndon had done on Lincoln's life.
"The documents stayed in Greencastle until Weik died in 1930," Jacobi told the museum audience.
After Weik's death, the documents were whisked away to the Library of Congress, where they have been ever since, the speaker said.
Weik, probably more famous locally for "Weik's History of Putnam County," lived in Greencastle his entire life, Jacobi said, indicating that the book "was kind of the highlight."
Known as "sort of the local Lincoln scholar," Weik ran for elected office a time or two, Jacobi noted, "but never won anything."
While Putnam County has been overwhelmingly a Republican county for decades, it wasn't necessarily that way during and after the Civil War.
"The Town of Greencastle was very loyal to the Republican Party," Jacobi said, calling the county more balanced between parties, something directly opposite to what occurs now.
While Lincoln won the county by 1,888 votes in 1860, he lost Putnam County to George McClellan in his 1864 re-election bid.
The biography that sprang from Herndon's research and Weik's writing was designed to avoid pure coronation of the man and "take off the silken gloves and tell the 'homely truth' about Lincoln," Jacobi related.
For example, among the stories the authors included is one in which they related how one of Lincoln's "favorite backwoods pleasures" when he lived in Indiana (age 7-21) was to go down to the local grist mill to grind corn.
Trying to impress those at the mill with the speed and power he could elicit from his trusty farm horse, Lincoln went to the whip once too often and the animal reared up and kicked him in the head, knocking the Great Emancipator out cold.
Herndon and Weik used such tales about Lincoln to illustrate his life under the theory that "the man grows out of the boy and the boy grows out of the child," Jacobi explained.
Weik first contacted Herndon about his role in collaborating on the project in 1886 and Herndon ended up shipping the bulk of his research and the entire Lincoln record he amassed -- the most comprehensive collection about Lincoln both as a person and a president -- to Greencastle for Weik to absorb.
In 1887, Herndon actually moved to Greencastle and lived for a while above the Weik family store during the literary collaboration.
While Weik was widely accepted as the junior partner in that venture, most scholars believe the Greencastle native, who enrolled at Indiana Asbury at age 14, has never received sufficient credit for the work he did on a project that openly bears his partner's name, "Herndon's Lincoln."
Books about Lincoln began to be published shortly after his tragic death on April 15, 1865, Jacobi noted, and continue to this day.
"There have been 15,000 books published about Lincoln," Jacobi added, "making him second only to Jesus Christ as the most written about person in history."