The Lincoln Museum - Gettysburg, PA
N 39° 49.848 W 077° 13.839
18S E 309114 N 4411358
Historic home doubles now as a National Park site/museum at Gettysburg Square, the heart of this Civil War town. Lincoln slept here the night before delivering his now famous Gettysburg Address at the National Cemetery dedication ceremony.
Waymark Code: WMBKVV
Location: Pennsylvania, United States
Date Posted: 05/31/2011
Views: 11
Lincoln attended services in the Presbyterian Church at Baltimore and High Streets during his short stay in Gettysburg. His now famous speech probably was written in part before he left Washington and completed at the Wills House, a three-and-a-half-story structure of brick that still stands at the southeast corner of Center Square..... --- Pennsylvania: A Guide to the Keystone State, 1940; page 232
President Lincoln came to town by train, arriving after dusk on November 18, 1863, and he spent the night at this house before delivering his famous speech, the Gettysburg Address, at the dedication of the Soldier's National Cemetery the next day on November 19. This event is now known as Remembrance Day. Some believe he wrote part of the speech in this house.
The original owner of this house, David Wills was a prominent lawyer. The Lincoln museum explains who he was and how he became involved in setting up the National Cemetery. At the time, there were no federal agencies to deal with the disaster and the bodies just kept piling up in and around the town.
The Pennsylvania governor visited Gettysburg on July 10, 1863 and gave Mr. Wills the important job of purchasing the graveyard land and organizing people to dig up the hastily buried bodies and identify them. The bodies had been scattered in graves all around the area. The Wills House Lincoln Museum also has a nice miniature layout of the village of Gettysburg in 1863. There are several original documents on display. The house was overcrowded with 38 dinner guests that night. President Abraham Lincoln stayed in the upstairs master bedroom with windows viewing the town Square. You can tour it and look through those same windows.
The house is located at the beginning, left side, of the Lincoln Square if traveling west into Gettysburg, along the LIncoln Highway. Parking is available street side for a quarter. The house has a couple of historic markers on the outside as well as the famous statue of Lincoln called 'Return Visit'. I paid $6.50 for my ticket. The house is a major feature of the Gettysburg Battlefield historic district and is a contributing structure as well according to the national park website (citation below).