Lincoln Home National Historic Site

Springfield, IL

The Lincoln Home, built in 1839, was the only home owned by the nation’s 16th president. Lincoln and his wife raised a family there until 1861, when Lincoln was elected president. They had planned to return after Lincoln left office, but Mary was so grieved by his assassination that she said she, “could not bear to return to the scenes of the happiest times of [her] life without [her] family.”Lincoln’s son, Robert, donated it to the Illinois in 1887. In 1972, the home was given to the United States, and is held by the National Park Service as a national historic site that reminds us of the President who signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

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