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The
project, to cost $248,902, will be performed by RJS Construction
of Peoria and should be complete by late fall of this year.
Interior work will include plastering, painting and
remodeling of the courthouse’s two fireplaces into historically
accurate designs. A
new security system and a new storage shed will also be added.
“We
have a commitment to maintain this site for future use,”
Schachtsiek said. He believes the Looking for Lincoln project
gives the Postville Courthouse “very much potential” as a
tourist site, especially because of the research that has been
done on the Lincoln legal papers.
[The original Postville
Courthouse]
“Postville
could be as important a site as Mount Pulaski on the Looking for
Lincoln Trail because it tells what Lincoln did to make a living.
About one-half of his time he spent traveling the Eighth
Judicial Circuit. There
are only three places where you can learn about his career
traveling the Circuit – Postville, Mount Pulaski and Metamora
courthouses,” he said.
“In
the past, attention has been focused on Lincoln’s political
career, but in recent years, partly because of the Lincoln legal
papers, attention has been focusing on his legal career. We’re fortunate we’ve got two of the four Lincoln legal
sites here in Logan County: Postville and Mount Pulaski,” he
added.
The
other two legal sites are the Metamora Courthouse and the
Lincoln-Herndon law office in Springfield.
The
research has been completed on the Lincoln legal papers,
Schachtsiek said, and they are now available on CD ROM for
computers. Certain
select cases will also be published in book form.
“What the Lincoln Legal Paper project did was draw in all
the raw data. Now it
is up to other historians and researchers to interpret this data.
What this means is that Lincoln’s legal career is now
more visible and the public will, we hope, be more interested and
more curious about it, and come to sites related to that legal
career.”
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The
town of Postville was the county seat of Logan County for eight
years, until Mount Pulaski won the honor from Postville in an 1848
referendum. In 1855
the county seat was moved again, this time to the growing town of
Lincoln, and by the time of the Civil War Lincoln had absorbed the
old town of Postville into its boundaries.
The
courthouse served as a store, a post office, a private home, and
was finally purchased by Henry Ford in 1929 for $8,000.
Ford dismantled the building and moved it to his Greenfield
Village in Dearborn, Mich., but donated the block the courthouse
had been located on to the Logan County Historical Society.
[The reconstructed Postville Courthouse was built
at the
site of the original courthouse in 1953.]
During
its centennial in 1953, the city of Lincoln presented the block of
land to the state of Illinois, which constructed a replica of the
building, based on the original in Greenfield Village.
In 1956 the “new” Postville Courthouse opened.
The first floor contains an interpretive exhibit on the
Eighth Judicial Circuit, on which Abraham Lincoln served as a
lawyer, and the second floor houses a courtroom and office furnished
as they might have been in the1840s when Lincoln was practicing
law. The Mount
Pulaski and Metamora courthouses are still the original buildings.
[Joan
Crabb]
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