Archivists have discovered a rare document with historic census information on Abraham Lincoln in a small, central Illinois city, according to the Illinois secretary of state.
Illinois and Menard County officials found an 1840 state census in a county vault in Petersburg, the secretary of state’s office announced Wednesday.
The 27-page, handwritten document lists Lincoln as one of the newly created county’s 4,481 residents, more than two decades before he became the 16th president of the United States.
“Abraham Lincoln lived in New Salem, just south of Petersburg in present-day Menard County, from 1831 to 1837,” Jesse White, secretary of state and state archivist, said in a statement.
The census bears the names of several Lincoln acquaintances: Mentor Graham, his former teacher; Bowling Green, who taught law; and James Rutledge, who encouraged him to run for the state legislature in 1832.
Prior to the discovery, Illinois state archives had 1840 state census documents for 37 of the state’s 87 counties.
The 1840 state census was the first to include Menard, which Lincoln established though legislation in 1839. Menard County, nicknamed “Mr. Lincoln’s Original Home Town,” was previously a part of Sangamon County.
At the time, Lincoln was a state representative and chairman of the Committee on Counties.
The 1840 census, which has been cleaned and flattened by state archives staff, is expected to be preserved on microfilm. It will also be scanned and available to researchers and genealogists at the Menard County clerk’s office and the Illinois Regional Archives Depository at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
State and county officials found several other historic documents from the vault, including: a land tract book (1827-1848); delinquent tax lists (1850-1870); a tax assessment abstract (1850-1857); and a county order book (1848-1873).
