Goosenest Prairie Gazette

              Summer, 2009
Goosenest Prairie Gazette
Volunteer Pioneers——Lincoln/Sargent Farm Foundation
Lincoln Log Cabin
State Historic Site
our interpretive programming, we first
need to have access to all of the pri-mary
documents relating to the Lin-colns’,
Hanks’, Halls’ and Johnstons’.
By gathering all of the primary
documents we find a clearer picture
unfolding of the extended family here
in Coles County. Some of the more
interesting items that we have uncov-ered
includes a listing of all the items
purchased by Reuben and Matilda
Moore at OC Harris’s store in the six
months leading up to Reuben’s death
in 1859. What is fascinating about
their purchases over that period is that
when residing in Farmington, the fam-ily
no longer raised chickens for the
eggs and meat, instead purchasing
three to five dozen eggs at-a-time
every few weeks. The proximity to
the store also allowed for purchases
to be made in small quantities, as if
to fit a peculiarity in the daily table
fare...’a cup of sugar’...’a cup of mo-lasses’...’
a cup of vinegar.’
Our research will continue
through the fall and winter and after
exhausting the courthouse of local
records, we will begin to look at the
documents compiled in the manu-script
collections at the Abraham Lin-coln
Presidential Library and Mu-seum.
So here on the farm we’ve had a
busy summer and we welcome you to
come see some of the changes!
What’s going on this sum-mer
at Lincoln Log Cabin? Well if
you haven’t taken the opportunity to
visit this summer you’ve missed a
lot! After our closure this last winter
we’ve been busy both on-and-off the
farms making up for lost time.
With our seasonal maintenance
crew we've been able to rebuild the
paddock for our milk cow at the Lin-coln
farm, restore the hillside adja-cent
to the Lincoln Cabin where the
hogs once lived and with the help of
volunteers, the raised garden beds in
Sarah’s garden were repaired and
refilled with new top soil.
At the Sargent farm, the exterior
of the house was scraped and painted
along with repairing the porches and
several window sills. Some of the
walnut siding which had deteriorated
was also replaced from our cache of
materials; after that project, a new
paddock was constructed around the
small log shed to the east of the
house which now serves as home to
our merino sheep. By constructing
the new paddock and moving the
sheep we are bringing our interpreta-tion
of the farm back in line with that
of Sam Sargent’s recollection of his
grandfather’s farm.
Our interpreter's have been busy
as well this year, in addition to inter-preting
daily life on the Lincoln and
Sargent farms, we committed time
each week to go to the Coles County
Courthouse to do research. Before
any changes can be implemented in
Mark Stanford with some of the Summer Youth Program participants at the County Fair.