Greencastle Courthouse Square
6 West Washington Street
William Herndon
Jesse Weik
Abraham Lincoln
and
Greencastle
During the long, hot summer of 1887, William H. Herndon of Springfield, Illinois, the former law partner of Abraham Lincoln, came to Greencastle to visit his young friend Jesse W. Weik, a native of Greencastle who had graduated from Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University) in 1875. Upon graduation Weik obtained a position in the United States Pension Bureau in Springfield, and here these two men met and became close friends. Both had a deep, abiding interest in the life of Lincoln, and it would in time become their dream to together write a book on the true life of Lincoln.
Following Lincoln's assassination, William Herndon, realizing Lincoln's great future impact upon history, began to collect all things he deemed pertinent to Lincoln's life. In time this collection would become awesome, and today it now rests in some of our nation' greatest libraries. Herndon, with his boxes of papers, arrived by train in Greencastle August 1st. He stayed at the Richardson Hotel (now demolished) on the northeast corner of College and Walnut Streets, where he rocked away the hot summer evenings on its front porch.
These two men were now ready to collaborate on the book they had long planned. Their office was on the second floor over this building in what was then the Weik Grocer-Bakery. Here they labored daily for long hours in what must have been intolerable heat. Herndon wrote rapidly and with flourish, drawing upon his personal memories and his cherished papers. Weik edited Herndon's pages, wrote some of the chapters himself, and gradually brought the manuscript into publishable form. Weik can be credited with providing the intellectual discipline necessary to bring Herndon's long dream to fruition. Without his help the book might never have been published.
Herndon left Greencastle for his home in Springfield the first week in September, old and tired out. He died there March 18, 1891. But he had lived to see the book published in the summer of 1889, under the long title "Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, the Historical and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln." This book has found an honored place in our country's literary and historical heritage. In 1892 a second, somewhat-altered edition was published.
Herndon's great Lincoln Collection had been left in Greencastle. The bulk now rests in our United States Library of Congress, the Rare Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. Jesse Weik devoted the rest of his life to writing and lecturing on the life of Lincoln, sharing generously his information with all who were interested. He died in August 1930 at his daughter's home in Larchmont, New York. He is buried in Greencastle.
And so William Herndon came to Greencastle one day, and Abraham Lincoln became a part of Greencastle history.
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