Abraham and Mary Lincoln were quite a team. At 11:00 p.m. on the night of November 6, 1860, Mr. Lincoln learned that he had won the presidential election. He ran over a mile from the telegraph office to his home yelling “Mary, Mary, we are elected” as he ran up the front stoop. From that moment on, the Lincoln family had innumerable details to attend to before they left Springfield for Washington, D.C. in 1861. They found a renter for their home at Eighth and Jackson, had a garage sale of sorts, and arranged for the care of the family pets.
During Mr. Lincoln’s last three months in Springfield, he was besieged by well-wishers, newly found old friends and a sea of office seekers. The visits, although always appreciated, became such a distraction that the family moved into the Chenery House hotel in Springfield until they left for the White House. The move to the hotel is perhaps more understandable when you consider that one of those visits to the Lincoln homestead was a group of men who wheeled a cannon right up to the front door and fired it.
The story goes that some patriotic Republican men of Rosamond, Illinois, about 60 miles southeast of Springfield about halfway to St. Louis, ordered a field artillery gun from a Terre Haute foundry. The small cannon was forged by Arba Holmes in “Terry Hot” for the men of the Rosamond Militia. Someone thought it would be a good idea to haul their new gun to Springfield for Lincoln’s blessing. They arrived on the President-elect’s doorstep just as secessionist fervor in the South was reaching a boiling point. The Union was being threatened and this group of Rosamondites were going to make sure they weren’t going down without a fight.
The men knocked on the door, introduced themselves to their favorite son and promptly fired the cannon down the street. The Lincoln boys, Tad and Willie, were thrilled. Mary was appalled. And Mr. Lincoln was somewhat surprised but nonplussed by the spectacle. After the smoke cleared and the windows stopped rattling, the men asked Mr. Lincoln to name it. Honest Abe pondered a moment, rubbed his newly grown beard and laid his hand upon the warm gun barrel and said, “Let it be named after my wife.” Thus begins the legend of Mary Lincoln’s cannon.
Much to the chagrin of historians and Lincoln scholars, very little of the cannon’s saga is documented. The 1968 Illinois Sesquicentennial Edition of Christian County History (the city of Rosamond’s location) credits the leadership of Capt. B.R. Hawley “accompanied by nearly every man in Rosamond and a number (of others), the group wanted to show Lincoln that there were still Union supporters in southern Illinois.”
The Lincolns left Springfield on February 11, 1861. Within a month, Fort Sumter was under siege and by April 12, 1861, the Civil War had begun. The Mary Lincoln cannon took on an entirely different purpose. Some reports claim the cannon stood silent sentinel outside the Lincoln homestead. Others discount these reports by citing that no photos of the Lincoln home taken during the Civil War show the cannon at the Home. The home was rented to a succession of tenants, until in 1883 legendary collector and promoter Osborn H. Oldroyd moved in. He evidently heard the story, and sometime around 1889 he got the cannon back and placed it on the side lawn of the Lincoln home.
Oldroyd, a personal hero of mine and a subject of past columns, was a diligent and sometimes ruthless collector of Lincoln artifacts. He opened his first Lincoln museum inside the old Lincoln homestead in 1884 and operated his shrine for nearly a decade before he ran afoul of Robert Todd Lincoln, allegedly for charging admission and for placing a photo of assassin John Wilkes Booth on the fireplace mantel inside the home — both charges that Oldroyd vehemently denied. Nevertheless, Oldroyd, a devoted Republican, was kicked out of the Lincoln home, by then operated by the State of Illinois, when a Democratic Governor was elected. Oldroyd moved his collection into the house where Lincoln died across from Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. in 1893 where he displayed it for nearly three decades. He sold it to the U.S. government for $50,000 in 1925 and today parts of the Oldroyd collection are on public display beneath Ford’s Theatre.
Mary Lincoln’s cannon stood guard outside the Lincoln Home for roughly 30 years. In 1928 the cannon was transferred to the State Historical Library (now known as the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library). At that point, a librarian wrote to the Office of the Chief of Ordnance, U.S. Department of War, in Washington, D.C., asking for any information about this cannon. Someone (most likely Oldroyd himself) was suggesting that it had been sent to Springfield from Washington, D.C. in 1889 at Oldroyd’s request. The War Department had no information to confirm or refute the story.
In 1950 the Illinois State Historical Library transferred the cannon to the Adjutant General of Illinois Maj. Gen. Leo M. Boyle, a no-nonsense career soldier who reported directly to the governor. His office had the cannon placed in their storage room in the 1918 Centennial Building near the 1876 State Capitol. Then it suddenly disappeared. For the next 15 years, no record of the cannon’s whereabouts can be found.
But at some point before the 1968 publication of the Christian County Sesquicentennial History book, the cannon returned to its hometown of Rosamond. No one knows how but there it was found, high atop a hill within the lonely bucolic Rosemond Grove Cemetery. (Inexplicably, the name on the cemetery’s gate does not match that of the town’s.) Somewhere along the line, the original wooden wheels were replaced by indistinct metal carriage wheels (possibly from an old farm implement). Now, rather than standing guard for her old house, Mary Lincoln’s cannon stands guard for a statue of her husband.
And oh what a statue it is! Dedicated in 1903 the statue is known as “Lincoln the Orator” by Charles James Mulligan. I have seen many Lincoln statues in my years spent chasing Lincoln and I feel comfortable in saying this one could rival them all. Hard to imagine that such a beautiful work of art stands pretty much unknown, un-visited and forgotten today.
Much more is known about the statue than the cannon that guards it. The sculptor was Charles Mulligan from nearby Pana, Illinois. It was the gift of Captain John W. Kitchell and his wife, Mary F. Kitchell. Capt. Kitchell stood just feet away from Mr. Lincoln when he made his farewell address to Springfield from the rear platform of a train car at the Great Western Railway station on February 11, 1861. He was among the first wave of 75,000 Illinois men to answer Lincoln’s call for troops at the outbreak of the Civil War. At the time of his death on the day after Christmas in 1914, Kitchell was considered to be the largest land owner in Central Illinois. He is buried just feet away from the statue he paid for.
The bronze statue was commissioned as a soldier’s monument. It is mounted upon a pedestal made from a single block of granite. On the front of the pedestal is chiseled the last sentence of the Gettysburg address, while on the reverse side is carved “In Memory of the Union Soldiers and Sailors and of their Beloved Commander-in-Chief and Noblest Friend, Abraham Lincoln.” The statue is unique in that it is one of the few depicting Abraham Lincoln in an oratorical pose with the right arm uplifted in a gesture intended to capture the crescendo moment of the Gettysburg address. Benefactor Kitchell was hesitant about the statue’s uncharacteristic pose but sculptor Mulligan remained insistent.
The statue was unveiled and dedicated October 29. 1903. Newspapers of the day noted that the weather was delightful and the unveiling was witnessed by more than 2,000 souls packing the little cemetery. Bands played, and children sang patriotic songs. The procession consisted of sixty carriages led by the comrades of the G. A. R. Captain Kitchell delivered the dedicatory address by saying in part, “There is no position so direct to the loyal heart as Lincoln’s good right arm, raised on high, half in benediction and all in thankfulness to the Almighty who holds the issue of all mortal things in the hollow of His forgetting hand.”
Standing in this quiet country cemetery today, it is hard to image the pomp and circumstance that took place there two days before Halloween in 1903. It is, however, equally easy to imagine the quiet indifference of visitors to the secluded graveyard today as they are drawn towards the imposing statue and walk right past Mary Lincoln’s cannon unaware. Lovers of history see so many cannons peppering historic sites that it is easy to become complacent to their significance.
My wife and I made the 3 1/2 hour trip to Rosamond, Illinois in search of Mary Lincoln’s cannon on the 151st anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s death last weekend. We did it the old fashioned way. No map. No Garmin. No address. We simply drove around this quiet little town until we found it. Truth is, there isn’t much to Rosamond. The landscape put me in mind of Spencer County in the Southern Indiana hills where Lincoln grew up. Farms, hills, gravel roads and lots of land. Should you care to go, the cannon is located in the Rosamond Cemetery, down a long winding one lane road and at the very top of the hill. But, as you pull off to the side, get out and walk to the cannon, please take a moment to place your hand atop Mary Lincoln’s cannon just as Abraham Lincoln did oh those many years ago. I have added a whole bunch of pictures of the cemetery and cannon on my Facebook page should you desire a closer view.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest book is “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
