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Lincoln's Visit to Terre Haute

1936; Indiana University Press; Linguagem: Inglês

1942-9711

Max Ehrmann,

American Environmental and Regional History

It is of interest that Abraham Lincoln was once a visitor in Terre Haute and a guest at the Prairie House, a pioneer hotel that stood on the same site (Wabash Avenue and Seventh Street) now occupied by the Terre Haute House.1 I have al ways believed the story as I was told that it was true by ac quaintances and friends, but I could not find sufficient evi dence to prove it until recently. Among those who told me of the visit were Thomas H. Nelson, William E. McClain and William Fairbanks, all of them colonels in the Civil War. Colonel Nelson was appointed Minister to Chili by President Lincoln and later became Minister to Mexico. Colonel Mc Clain became Deputy Commissioner of Pensions under Presi dent Cleveland. Colonel Fairbanks, a much beloved man and brother of Crawford Fairbanks, moved to Joplin, Missouri, where he became a man of affairs just as his brother did in Terre Haute. I lived at the old Terre Haute House which replaced the Prairie House, with these three men. The building and site of the Prairie House were owned by Chauncey Rose, another of Terre Haute's beloved philanthropists. The Prairie House was regarded as almost out in the country, and the proprietors of the hostelry ran a bus from what is now the court-house square (south of Wabash Avenue, between Third and Second) which was then the stage-coach stopping place and center of early Terre Haute business activities. But to return to Lincoln's visit, the following passage is found in Lincoln the Man, by Edgar Lee Masters : He [Lin coln] believed in the mad stone ; and one of his sisters-in-law related that Lincoln took one of his boys to Terre Haute, In diana, to have the stone applied to a wound inflicted by a dog on the boy .2 The discovery of this information, based on the statement of a sister of Mrs. Lincoln, delighted me because it agreed with what Colonels Nelson, McClain, and Fairbanks had all told me when they related that they had heard of Mr. Lincoln's visit to Terre Haute and that he was a guest at the Prairie House.