Lincoln Trail Homestead — Abraham Lincoln's First Illinois Home

Just west of Decatur lies the site where a twenty-one-year-old Abraham Lincoln first set foot in Illinois. In March of eighteen thirty, Thomas Lincoln moved his extended family, about a dozen people, here from Indiana, and Abraham helped them raise an eighteen-by-eighteen-foot log cabin and split rails for a ten-acre field. He also hired himself out to neighboring farmers as a rail-splitter, earning the political nickname that would follow him to the White House.

The family lasted only a year. A brutal winter drove Thomas south to Charleston, and Abraham struck out on his own, floating downriver to New Salem. The state memorial established here in nineteen thirty-eight marks the approximate spot.

The Rail Splitter's true starting line in Illinois.