Tag: Beardstown IL

Wikipedia says: Beardstown is a city in Cass County, Illinois, United States.

Beardstown is located on the Illinois River, which plays an important role in the economy and history of the community, and is the site of two grain terminals where farm products are transferred to barges for transport.

Beardstown was first settled by Thomas Beard in 1819; he erected a log cabin at the edge of the Illinois River, from which he traded with the local Native Americans and ran a ferry. The town was laid out in 1827 and was incorporated as a city in 1896. During the Black Hawk War in 1832, it was a base of supplies for the Illinois troops.

Thomas Beard’s son, Edward “Red” Beard, a noted gambler and saloon keeper of the Old West, was killed in a gunfight in Kansas in 1873 by “Rowdy Joe” Lowe. Earlier, he had built a two-story brick building which was used for 85 years as a store and inn. This inn is alleged to have sheltered Abraham Lincoln on his visits to Beardstown, but that is legend and unconfirmed. The building was demolished and replaced by a post office. William Henry Herndon, Lincoln’s Springfield law partner, claimed that Lincoln contracted syphilis from a prostitute in Beardstown, an incident author Gore Vidal colorfully recounts in his historical novel Lincoln (1984).

The Beardstown Courthouse was the site of a famous trial which helped build Abraham Lincoln’s reputation as a lawyer after he used a copy of a farmer’s almanac to undermine the credibility of the prosecution’s key witness.