Lincoln Land
It was on this date in 1809 that the sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky. We think of Illinois when we think of Lincoln…after all the license plates say “Land of Lincoln”…but he was born in Kentucky, moved with his family to Indiana when he was 7, and made his way with his family to Illinois when he was 21.
And the first Republican to become president owned land in Iowa…two parcels, in fact. He was awarded a total of 160 acres of Iowa land due to his service as a captain in the Black Hawk War in 1832. From 1775 to 1855, the U.S. government issued “bounty-land” warrants to reward military service and encourage enlistment, typically 160 acres.
It was by that method that Lincoln claimed a 40-acre parcel in Tama County in 1852, only six years after Iowa became a state, and 120 acres in Crawford County in western Iowa in 1856.
Lincoln never actually visited the land. His friend and legal colleague, Clifton Moore, managed the property and paid taxes on it. After Lincoln’s assassination, the land passed to his widow and sons. Son Robert Todd Lincoln sold the Iowa land in 1892.
There is a highway marker along U.S. Highway 63 in Tama County, pointing the way to a marker commemorating the ground Lincoln owned there. The town of Lincoln is in Tama County, having been named that in 1918—the town had been known as Berlin, but was changed during the first world war. The Daughters of the American Revolution put up a marker at the Crawford County site.
As noted, Lincoln never visited the land he owned in Iowa, but he did make reference to owning land in the state when he made a political speech in Council Bluffs in 1859, the year before he ran for president. Apparently long before the Iowa Caucuses, presidential candidates did their best to appeal to Iowa voters.
