Mount Pulaski Courthouse State Historic Site

This Greek Revival building was built in 1847-1848, by local Mt. Pulaski residents, and was the county seat from 1848 until 1855. This historic site is one of two remaining courthouses on their original site, located on the old Eighth Judicial Circuit. Abraham Lincoln practiced law here, along with many other prestigious lawyers of the time. The upstairs courtroom still contains the original flooring where you can walk where Lincoln walked. 

In 1839, when the county of Logan was created, there were only 3 towns: Middletown (founded in 1832), Postville (founded in 1835), and Mt. Pulaski (founded in 1836). Postville was in the center of the county and was chosen to be the first county seat. A small, two story, board building was built for the courthouse. Mt. Pulaski was growing faster than the other towns in the county. Many businesses were opening on the square, churches were being built, and even the town boundaries were being expanded. The residents of Mt. Pulaski petitioned the state legislature to have a vote about moving the county seat. Mt. Pulaski won because their population was growing. The county sold the old Postville courthouse for three hundred dollars. The residents of Mt. Pulaski raised two thousand and seven hundred dollars more and built the Greek Revival Courthouse.  

The county seat moved to Mt. Pulaski in 1848 and was opened for court for the Fall circuit. Abraham Lincoln was not here at that time because he was in Washington D.C. serving his term in Congress (1847 and 1848). Other lawyers that practiced here and traveled on the Eighth Judicial Circuit were Stephen T. Logan, William Herndon, Ward Hill Lamon, Henry Whitney, John Todd Stuart, Stephen Douglas, Swett, and Trumbull. During court sessions if you needed a lawyer, you would find them located on the courthouse lawn and ask them to represent you. Lawyers had to be fast thinkers and had extraordinarily little time to prepare, like lawyers do today.  

Logan County residents would come to do business on the first floor of the courthouse during the year, but court was only held in the Spring and Fall. Located on the first floor were six offices of the Circuit Clerk, the County Court/County Clerk, the Sheriff, the Surveyor, the Treasurer, and the School Commissioner. Upstairs was the courtroom along with the jury room and the judge’s chamber. Today, the offices and courtroom are replicated to look just as they did in the 1850s.

Two well-known Lincoln cases tried at the Mt. Pulaski Courthouse were over patent disputes; the Cast Iron Tombstone Case and the Horological Cradle Case. Other cases tried here would have consisted of debt cases, routine and everyday matters, real estate disputes, slander, divorce, and negligence.  

The Eighth Judicial Circuit was organized in 1839 and included the counties of Christian, Dewitt, Livingston, Logan, Macon, McLean, Menard, Sangamon, and Tazewell. It was a four-to-five-hundred-mile round trip and took ten to twelve weeks on a horse. The terrain consisted of hard wood groves, rivers, streams, and tall prairie grass. It was much easier when the railroad came through in 1853. 

The railroad started and went across Logan County in a diagonal from St. Louis to Chicago. Three real estate entrepreneurs, assisted by Abraham Lincoln, worked to buy land to build a new town, name it after Lincoln, and provide a stop so trains could get water.

In 1853, the new town of Lincoln petitioned the state legislature for another vote to move the county seat again. The town of Lincoln won the vote due to the railroad and its growing population. It took two years to build the new courthouse in Lincoln. In 1855, all the furniture and records from Postville and Mt. Pulaski were moved to the new courthouse. Within two years, the courthouse burned and destroyed most of the Lincoln and Logan County history.  

After the county seat left in 1855, the courthouse building in Mt. Pulaski was used as city hall, a school a post office, a library, and community building. It turned into a historic site in 1936, after it was sold to the State of Illinois for one dollar. After three years of researching how it would have looked when Lincoln practiced law and ample restoration, it finally opened as a historic site in 1939. The Mount Pulaski Courthouse State Historic Site was put on the Registry of National Historic Places in 1978.  

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