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The town of New Salem, where I became acquainted with Lincoln, was laid out in 1829 by John Cameron and George Rutledge on a high piece of ground overlooking the Sangamon river, and was surrounded by fine farming country. It was twenty miles northwest of Springfield; had some fifty houses,

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about one-third frame and the balance log; there were four stores, postoffice, log tavern, a blacksmith and wagon maker’s shop, a carding machine, and a water mill on the Sangamon river.

A few months after Mr. Lincoln took the postoffice, finding that the revenue would not support him, he took a young man named William Berry in partnership with him and opened a general country store. The stock consisted chiefly of groceries, but they also had many notions, hats, mittens, etc. The entire stock could not have been worth over $1200. The charge has been made that Mr. Lincoln took out a license and kept a saloon in the store. Indeed, Judge Douglas in his debate with Lincoln occasionally charged Lincoln that he had been engaged in the saloon business. Lincoln’s reply was that he had never kept a saloon, and that he had never sold a glass of liquor over a counter; but that if he ever had run a saloon, and Douglas had lived in that neighborhood, he would undoubtedly have been his best customer.

I am sure that no liquor was sold by the drink in their store while Mr. Lincoln had an interest in it. I had occasion to be in the sore very often while I was carrying the mail, and had a much better opportunity to know what was going on there than did William H Herndon, who wrote a story of Lincoln’s life, but who lived twenty miles away from New Salem. I think that it is likely they did sell whisky by the quart and gallon, as was done in every pioneer store. Indeed, whisky was as common an article of barter as was coffee, sugar or tea. The pioneers were subject to much sickness, caused by malarial conditions—fever and ague, typhoid fever, etc. A favorite remedy was bitters made from barks and roots and whisky. At that time the country was full of poisonous snakes, and it was a common thing for people to be bitten. The one remedy in those days was to fill up the patient with whisky. The whisky used at that time was the pure juice of the corn or rye, and could be bought at fifty cents a gallon. We had none of that vile, poisonous stuff that is now made from drugs and kept for sale in the saloons.

In all my acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln I never knew him to take a drink of liquor of any kind, nor use tobacco in any form,

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or ever to use profane language. His earliest biographer, W. H. Herndon, claimed that Lincoln did drink whisky and swear. It is claimed that the swearing was done in New Orleans, where he had gone with a flat boat full of produce, and where he attended an auction sale of Negroes and saw a young woman two-thirds white being sold. It was then that Mr. Lincoln expressed his indignation by an oath. The time when it was claimed that he drank liquor was when he was said to have lifted a barrel of whisky to his lips and drank out of the bung hole. I am inclined to believe that my old college chum and roommate, W. H. Herndon, drew largely on his imagination when he told these stories.

At this time Mr. Lincoln boarded at the Rutledge tavern, at which I also put up, as often as I went to New Salem. It was a hewed log house, two stories high, with four rooms above and four below. It had two chimneys with large fireplaces, and not a stove in the house. The proprietor was James Rutledge, a man of more than ordinary ability, and, with his wife, remarkably kind and hospitable. They had a large family of eight or nine children, and among them was their daughter Anne, celebrated in song and story as Lincoln’s sweetheart. She was two or three years younger than Lincoln, of about medium size, weighing some 125 pounds. She was very handsome and attractive, as well as industrious and sweet-spirited. I seldom saw her when she was not engaged in some occupation—knitting, sewing, waiting on table, etc. I think she did the sewing for the entire family. Lincoln was boarding at the tavern and fell deeply in love with Anne, and she was no less in love with him. They were engaged to be married, but they had been putting off the wedding for a while, as he wanted to accumulate a little more property and she wanted to go longer to school.

Before the time came when they were to be married, Miss Anne was taken down with typhoid fever and lay desperately ill four weeks. Lincoln was an anxious and constant watcher at her bedside. The sickness ended in her death; and young Lincoln was heartbroken and prostrate. The histories have not exaggerated his pitiful grief. For many days he was not able to

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attend to business. I believe his very soul was wrapped up in that lovely girl. It was his first love—the holiest thing in life—the love that cannot die. The deepest gloom and melancholy settled over his mind. He would often say to his friends: "My heart is buried in the grave with that dear girl." He would often go and sit by her grave and read a little pocket Testament he carried with him. What did he read? I know not; but I’ll warrant you that it was "Let not your hearts be trouble," or John’s vision on Patmos with Anne among the white-robed throng in the land where sickness and death are unknown. One stormy winter’s night he was at a friend’s house, and as the sleet and rain came down on the roof he sat with bowed head and the tears trickled down his face. His friends begged him to control his sorrow. "I cannot," he moaned, "while storm and darkness are on her grave." His friends did everything that kindness could suggest, but in vain, to soothe his sorrow.

Anne Rutledge was of gentle blood, she would have made him a noble wife in his humbler earlier years and in the imperial later life. Miss Anne’s brother David took a course in Jacksonville College, and then went to Lewistown and studied law in the office of Lewis W. Ross and John P. Boice. He married Miss Elizabeth Simms, daughter of Colonel Reuben Simms, and he afterwards moved to Petersburg and opened a law office. He was a bright and promising man, and no doubt would have made his mark in state and nation but for his untimely death. He was buried by the side of his sister Anne the New Salem cemetery.

His widow married C. W. Andrus, one of the prominent merchants of Havana. Major Newton Walker, L. W. Ross and James W. Sims all married sisters to Mrs. David Rutledge.

The Rutledge family stood high in the Sangamon country. Anne’s father was a South Carolinian of high birth. One of his family signed the Declaration of Independence; another was chief justice of the supreme court under Washington’s appointment, and a third was a conspicuous leader in Congress. So Lincoln’s boyhood love was of high and gentle birth.

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