Dr. Newton Bateman was serving as Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Illinois when Abraham Lincoln was nominated for President in June 1860. From that time until Lincoln left for Washington to assume his duties in February 1861, he used the Executive Chamber in the Capitol Building as his office and almost daily borrowed Dr. Bateman's adjoining office for the overflow crowd. Lincoln generally introduced Dr. Bateman to his callers as follows: "This is my little friend, and big schoolmaster of Illinois."

Illinois College was central to the life of Dr. Bateman. Bateman first met Lincoln in 1842 while he was a student at I.C. In 1843, Bateman helped found Sigma Pi Society, an I.C. fraternal-literary group, which made Lincoln an honorary member. Bateman served as teacher and principal in schools in the St. Louis area. In 1851, he returned to Jacksonville, where he married and continued as a school principal. He bought the house on this site in 1851 and expanded it over the years. The Gothic Revival structure is a most unusual survivor of that early period. Dr. Bateman served five terms as Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Illinois, beginning in 1859, shortly after he moved to Springfield. From 1875 to 1893, he was president of Knox College in Galesburg, building that institution into one of the great midwestern colleges.

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