County of marker: Mason County
Location of Marker: Main St. & Plum St., courthouse lawn, Havana
Artist: New York sculptor Georg J. Lober
Marker Erected by: Daughters of the American Revolution
Date Marker Erected: 1921
"Imagine a bright, crisp autumn day in Central Illinois, September 26, 1852. A party of travelers pauses on a ridge, surveying the sweeping view to the west, miles of prairie grass as far as they can see. The grass is almost as tall as their horses, russet in its fall color, spotted with the yellows of late-season blooms, some as tall as the grass. The long ridge, made of enormous deposits left by ancient glaciers as they retreated ten thousand to fifteen thousand years earlier, will someday be known as the Eureka Moraine. The scene is unbroken but for the track they are following. The riders are on the road from Metamora, the seat of Woodford County, to Bloomington, seat of McLean County. They are in the vicinity of the county line. Other than an occasional farmstead and a rare passing rider, they have seen no other sign of settlement for some time. As they ride, their conversation is accompanied by the whistle of quail, interrupted by the flushing of grouse. They have seen retreating wolves keeping their distance, and they have frequently startled deer from their grassy hiding places.
"The group had ascended the ridge from the ford on the Mackinaw River, several miles back. Benign and gently flowing in this drier season, the river could be treacherous when they cross it in the spring. The road descended down the bluffs of open timber with huge, wide, bur and white oaks, twisted chinquapin oaks, and shagbark hickories, to the firm gravel of the ford. This prairie stream, its waters cleansed and filtered by thousands of acres of wetlands along its course, is teeming with fish, including small-mouth bass, northern pike, and countless species of mussels. The river bottoms are guarded by giant cottonwoods.
"The men are lawyers riding from the semi-annual court session in one county to that in the next. The counties of Illinois were organized into circuits by the legislature. As population increased, not only would counties be divided, but the number of counties in each circuit would change to reflect the changes in population. These lawyers were traveling the Eighth Judicial Circuit, consisting of fourteen counties containing an area of over ten thousand square miles—more than twice the size of the state of Connecticut. The population of those counties in the census of 1850 was approximately one hundred thousand. Each spring and fall, court was held in consecutive weeks in each of the fourteen counties, a week or less in each. The exception was Springfield, the state capital and the seat of Sangamon County. The fall term opened there for a period of two weeks. Then the lawyers traveled the fifty-five miles to Pekin, which replaced Tremont as the Tazewell County seat in 1850. After a week, they traveled the thirty-five miles to Metamora, where they spent three days. The next stop, thirty miles to the southeast, was Bloomington, the second-largest town in the circuit. Because of its size, it would generate more business, so they would probably stay there several days longer. From there they would travel to Mt. Pulaski, seat of Logan County, a distance of thirty-five miles; it had replaced Postville as county seat in 1848 and would soon lose out to the new city of Lincoln, to be named for one of the men in this entourage. The travelers would then continue to another county and then another and another until they had completed the entire circuit, taking a total of eleven weeks and traveling a distance of more than four hundred miles." ~ The Real Lincoln Highway
More on riding the circuit with Mr. Lincoln.