The Belle of New Salem

The Belle of New Salem

by Glenn W. LaFantasie

The story of a romance between Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, once believed to be only a legend but now more widely accepted as fact by historians, almost always focuses on Lincoln and his emotional attachment to the almost spectral young woman, whom he grew to love in New Salem, Illinois. It is as though we see her only through his eyes, which, in one sense, is unavoidable, because most of the evidence for their romance comes down to us in an oral tradition kept conscientiously by Lincoln’s law partner William H. Herndon. The romance came to light when, in the wake of Lincoln’s assassination, Herndon planned to write a biography of his famous partner and interviewed numerous people who had lived in New Salem, a small, prairie village on the Sangamon River, during the mid-1830s, when Lincoln wooed Miss Rutledge and may have asked for her hand in marriage. But who was this young woman? What can we glean about her from Herndon’s informants? What do we know about her, other than her role as Lincoln’s first love?

One thing we know is that she loved to sing. Ann (sometimes called Annie or Anna) Mayes Rutledge, the darling teenage daughter of James Rutledge, one of the founders of New Salem, sang in church (her father was also a Cumberland Presbyterian preacher) and in her family’s primitive log cabin, which her father operated as a tavern. Given her pronounced piety, her favorite song was a rather gloomy hymn written in the eighteenth century by Joseph Hart, an English libertine who, after falling under the charismatic power of the famous evangelist George Whitefield, converted with all his might to Christianity. Ann’s beloved hymn, simply titled No. 42, began with this stanza:

Vain Man, thy fond Pursuit’s forbear.

Repent. Thy End is nigh.

Death at the farthest can’t be far.

Oh! think before thou die.

The lyrics, which seem excessively morbid and melancholic, suited pious evangelical Protestants on both sides of the Atlantic whose most fervent desire was to perfect their own godliness on earth so that upon the great day of reckoning they would be welcomed into the gates of heaven. Like other hymns written in iambic tetrameter, the song has a steady cadence and a somber, but catchy, melody.

In the small, intimate space of the Rutledge tavern, Lincoln came to know Ann Rutledge and her entire family—her parents and eight siblings—when he boarded there after his return to New Salem from the Black Hawk War in 1832. The tavern, which also served as the Rutledges’ residence, was a two-story, hewed log house with four rooms on each floor. Two chimneys rose on each side of the structure of the large fireplaces inside, but there were no stoves. A millwright by trade, James Rutledge—who founded the village and established the mill on the Sangamon River with his wife’s nephew, John M. Cameron—was a religiously devout and educated man who, despite an impulsive streak in business matters, earned the respect of his fellow settlers for his “hospitable” and “generous” ways and for his loyalty to friends. “No breath of slander follows him,” said Herndon, who knew Rutledge through his own cousin, Rowan. On occasion, Rutledge could be very quiet, almost brooding—an effect, perhaps, of his deep religious convictions and New Salem’s dwindling prospects as an entrepôt, a trend that began almost from the very moment he and Cameron got the mill up and running.

In the early 1830s, he also expanded his residence into a tavern, where he boarded Lincoln and other single laborers who worked in the vicinity of New Salem. Despite an addition that Rutledge built to convert his domicile into an inn, the space inside the structure remained cramped and bathed in darkness. The interior was only roughly finished with whitewashed walls, wide plank floors, and plain furniture. At any given time, there might have been as many as fourteen people or more occupying the incommodious interior. With little ventilation in the log structure, except when weather allowed one or more of the four doors and windows to be kept open, the inn must have reeked, as Shakespeare would have put it, with an “odouriferous stench.”

James Rutledge stood high in the community as a founder, businessman, and leader. Fascinated by young Lincoln’s physical and intellectual agility, Rutledge welcomed Lincoln into his tavern as a boarder and became as enamored of him as his whole family did. It didn’t hurt any that Rutledge and Lincoln politically were both supporters of Henry Clay, the prominent U.S. senator from Kentucky.

The Rutledges enjoyed Lincoln’s humorous stories and his willingness to help out with various chores inside the tavern and out. Many decades later, Sarah (“Sally”) Rutledge, the youngest child, remembered that Lincoln “was just like a member of the family.” Boarders in those days, she explained, “took their place as additional members of the family rather than as paying guests.” Sally often sat on Lincoln’s lap in front of the tavern fireplace on cold winter evenings. “He was always kindly and gentle,” she said, and he kept “everyone in an uproar with his funny tales.”

Ann Rutledge and Lincoln both studied grammar under the tutelage of Mentor Graham, often going through Samuel Kirkham’s Grammar page by page. In time, Lincoln gave Ann his own copy of the textbook. The Rutledges heard him repeat passages of prose and lines of poetry around the tavern, either to entertain the family and other boarders or to carve the words indelibly into his memory. While he strolled the dirt streets of New Salem, reading to himself and kicking up dust as he walked, he once scooped up Robert Rutledge, Ann’s younger brother, tucked him under his arm, and continued reading and walking with the youngster “yelling and kicking vigorously.” Eventually Lincoln would conspicuously stop, pretending “that he had just discovered a boy under his arm,” and walk off with him, still tucked in the crook of his arm.

More than once, Lincoln’s loose joviality led to pandemonium in the Rutledge household. On one occasion, his roughhousing with one of Ann’s brothers resulted in the snapping of cords in a rope bed. To the Rutledges, Lincoln was a “tall, lank, ungainly figure” with “big ears and mouth, but when he talked one never thought of that. He was so good-natured and full of life that no one ever thought about his looks.” Years later, Nancy Rutledge, one of Ann’s sisters, could picture him perfectly, “sitting by the big fireplace, absorbed in a book or chatting merrily with Annie or one of my brothers.” But the boarder was becoming more than an adopted member of the family. It was soon evident to some of the Rutledges—particularly youngest sister Sally, if not Ann herself—that Lincoln “cared especially for Ann” more than he cared for anyone else in the family.

To judge from those who remembered her, Ann Rutledge was the belle of New Salem. Nancy Rutledge described her as “small, with dark blue eyes, light brown hair, and a very fair complexion. Everyone said she was pretty.” Sally Rutledge agreed. “Ann was light-complexioned, her hair auburn . . . [with] blue eyes and was slender and not very robust. All of our memories and traditions of her are of a sweet and beautiful character.” Although Sally considered her less than robust, she recalled, nevertheless, that her older sister was “vivacious.” Only one relevant source, a New Salem woman who claimed to know Ann well, asserted that Ann was “heavy set,” but the woman, Parthena Nance Hill, the wife of the merchant Samuel Hill, cannot be completely trusted because she disliked Ann for her red hair and refused to accept that she was beautiful.

Ann’s family members are the best sources for getting to know her in our time. The Rutledges consistently remembered Ann’s specific traits and attributes. They independently painted a vivid portrait of the same young woman. “She had light hair and blue eyes,” wrote her brother, Robert, who was a very young boy at the time, but whose memory of her never faded. Ann’s cousin, James McGrady Rutledge, declared that “she was a beautiful girl, and as bright as she was pretty.” The very best overall picture of Ann, however, came from Mentor Graham, her schoolteacher: “She was about 20 ys—Eyes blue large, & Expressive—fair complexion—Sandy, or light auburn hair—dark flaxen hair—about 5-4 in—face rather round—outlines beautiful—nervous vital Element predominated—good teeth—Mouth well Made beautiful—medium Chin—weigh about 120-130—hearty & vigorous—Amiable—Kind. . . . She dressed plainly, but Exceedingly neat, was poor and Could not afford rich Clothing.” Graham put a few more pounds on her than her relatives did, but in all other respects his description, for all its choppiness, fit Ann to a tee.

Born in Kentucky on January 7, 1813, Ann was regarded as the workhorse of the Rutledge family, often taking on the duties of housekeeper and helping in the tavern whenever necessary. She was a mother hen to the other children, or in the words of her sister, Nancy, “very housewifely and domestic.” Her family fondly recalled Ann “washing in the old-fashioned way,” probably with a washboard and wooden tub, and sweeping and baking. She was “a good cook and took pride in her housework.” In her dotage, Sally Rutledge Saunders looked back in time and could plainly see “Sister Ann as she sat sewing from day to day, for she was the seamstress of the family.” Ann taught Sally—and probably her other sisters as well—how to sew. “I remember her patience with me,” said Sally, “as well as her industry and kindness.”

If Ann’s workload appears heavy, especially when one considers that her sisters—who gazed into a distant, rosy past—never once mentioned their own chores around the house, it would be wrong to assume that Ann’s burden was any heavier than what most prairie women (and, in fact, all American women of her time) confronted every day: hard work and more hard work. In nineteenth-century America, gender roles, while not strictly divided, tended to be defined as existing in separate spheres—in virtually every family, the husband concentrated on his work, which usually took him outside of the home, and the mother focused on domestic responsibilities, including housework, cooking, and the nurturing of children. As the moral guardian of the household, it also fell to a mother to ensure that her children would be exposed to religious faith and principles and brought up with enough experience to undertake their prescribed roles as men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, once they became adults.

What came to be called the cult of domesticity shaped the daily activities of Ann and her siblings, customarily after they had passed from childhood into their teenage years. Women on the prairie had a particularly hard life, if only because conveniences made available to urban women in cities like Springfield and Chicago, where a new middle class was emerging in American life, could not be found on the frontier—thus, Ann Rutledge washed the family clothes in the old-fashioned way. She was, as her family and friends attested, extraordinarily good-natured and friendly. “She had a gentle & kind a heart as an ang[e]l,” said William G. Greene, the storekeeper who had unsuccessfully sought her affections. Her neighbors marveled at her sterling qualities. She was “full of love—kindness—sympathy. She was beloved by evry body and evry body respected and lovd her—so sweet & angelic was she.”

It could be said, with some degree of certainty, that her virtues became even more sparkling long after the fact because of her association with Lincoln, but nothing can detract from how well, generally speaking, she was remembered by her family and neighbors. Esther Summers Bale, the wife of the owner of a local carding mill, said what everybody else said about Ann: she was “slim—pretty—Kind—[a] tender good hearted woman . . . beloved by all who Knew her.” Everyone in New Salem also agreed that Ann was intelligent (Greene, going overboard, called her positively “brilliant”). Sally Rutledge pronounced her sister “a student by nature” and “ambitious,” by which she presumably meant that Ann sought as much knowledge as she could get. Her brother Robert affirmed that “my sister was esteemed the brightest mind in the family” and “studious.” Remarked a cousin, “She was well educated for that early day, a good conversationalist, and always gentle and cheerful, a girl whose company people liked.”

In Mentor Graham’s estimation, Ann was a “tolerably good Schollar in all the Common branchs including grammar &c.” Sometimes she stayed with Graham and his wife Nancy while pursuing her studies; in fact, her overnight visits occurred when Lincoln was residing and studying at the Graham house, which was located at the foot of the steep bluff on the banks of the Sangamon River. The young woman also acquired instruction from Arminda Rogers, a good friend about ten years Ann’s senior who had taught school for several terms and lived four miles east of New Salem. Miss Rogers, according to her son Henry B. Rankin, tutored Ann “in Blair’s Rhetoric, Kirkham’s Grammar and the elementary studies she was reviewing, preparatory to entering an academy for young ladies that had been opened in Jacksonville, Illinois.” Later, in a postscript to a letter addressed to his father, Ann’s young brother David encouraged her to further her studies in Jacksonville, where he attended Illinois College: “Valued Sister. So far as I can understand Miss Graves will teach another school in the Diamond Grove. I am glad to hear that you have a notion of comeing to school, and I earnestly recommend to you that you would spare no time from improving your education and mind. Remember that Time is worth more than all Gold[;] therefore throw away none of your golden moments.”

Only her devotion to God rivaled her craving for knowledge. Like so many other Americans of the time, Ann and her family fell under the spell of the evangelical enthusiasm that swept through the country in a series of revivals that came to be called the Second Great Awakening. These revivals, which upended established churches and remade American Protestantism over the course of several decades during the first half of the nineteenth century, emphasized the individual’s personal relationship with God and heightened expectations of Christ’s Second Coming. Evangelicals hoped to perfect themselves by casting sin out of their lives; by that means, they also hoped to perfect society and usher in the golden millennium, a thousand years of piety and peace, that would accelerate Christ’s return. The success of evangelical revivalism depended on the conversion of all souls to a life without sin. Such a conversion could be achieved by perfecting one’s personal union with God, but it could also come about by means of mass conversions at rural camp meetings, where charismatic preachers delivered sermons of fire and brimstone to large audiences gathered together for days and days of religious instruction and haranguing. People of all kinds, white and Black, traveled great distances to find God’s immanence in themselves and among their fellow worshipers, seeking an answer to the great question, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30). In 1827, Timothy Flint reported that in the West “preaching is of a highly popular cast, and its first aim is to excite the feelings.” Throughout the region, he wrote, “excitements” or “religious awakenings” were common. He described the enormous effect of these awakenings, which occurred “for the most part under the ministry of the Cumberland presbyterians,” on communities throughout the West.

With its own deep Kentucky roots, the Rutledge family belonged to the Cumberland Presbyterians and attended regular meetings in New Salem led by John M. Cameron, who became a licentiate of the church in 1827. Cameron, who founded New Salem with James Rutledge in 1829, preached to small gatherings in the village, perhaps in Mentor Graham’s schoolhouse or in Rutledge’s tavern. As was the custom among the licentiates of the church, Cameron’s preaching consisted of carefully written, structured sermons based on scriptural texts. Unfortunately none of Cameron’s sermons survive. Around the time he resided in New Salem, Cameron became a candidate for the ministry, which meant that he could participate in camp meetings by exhorting extemporaneously and inspiring his audience with charisma and alluring entreaties, not necessarily based on any chapter and verse from scripture, but drawn entirely from his own experiential grasp of how sin might be cast out and light let into the soul. An admirer remarked in the late 1870s that Cameron’s life had been spent “upon the frontier; and his occupation practically was to clear the way for those who would follow. . . . He died as he had lived, faithful to every obligation.”

In late summers, the Rutledges regularly attended camp meetings at Concord (in close proximity to the Rutledge farm at Sand Ridge, about seven miles north of New Salem), or at Rock Creek, also close by. At these meetings, the Rutledge clan camped together, clustering family members into a kinship settlement of sorts, which enabled each member to share the same spiritual experiences of light and love and to feel the unity that these camp gatherings fostered among the faithful. The Rutledges—along with the Berry, Cameron, and Pantier families—outnumbered the other area families at these meetings. Usually families began to arrive on a Thursday; by Sunday, in the words of T. G. Onstot, who attended camp meetings in Sangamon County as a child, “the grounds would present the appearance of a small village.” “There was good singing,” Onstot remembered. “The preacher would read the hymn in a loud voice and then would ‘line’ it and everybody would sing.” (In line singing, the preacher would chant the first line of a hymn and the congregation would then sing it, usually in harmony.) Several different ordained ministers and licentiates, including the Rev. John M. Berry and John Cameron, would exhort God’s clear word through the filter of Cumberland Presbyterian doctrine, which, more than anything else, emphasized as canon the “experimental” (or experiential) nature of Christianity.

Presumably Ann Rutledge felt her faith as intensely as other Cumberland Presbyterians did at camp meetings, perhaps even by uncontrollably falling unconscious to the ground, getting the jerks, shouting, singing, or spinning round and round. “There was sound preaching in those days,” observed Onstot. “The preachers preached hell and damnation. . . . They could hold a sinner over the pit of fire and brimstone till he could see himself hanging by a slender thread, and he would surrender and accept the gospel that was offered to him.” While visiting the West in the late 1820s, Simon Ansley Ferrall, a Dubliner who later became a noteworthy barrister in London, described a typical evening camp meeting and, in particular, the role played by the assembled women: “A chosen leader commenced to harangue—he bellowed—he roared—he whined—he shouted until he became actually hoarse, and the perspiration rolled down his face.” Then the faithful caught the emotion and would fling themselves onto the straw in “the penitents’ pen—the old dames leading the way.” In due course, about twenty women, young and old, “were lying in every direction and position, and profaning the name of Jesus.” The preachers, who fell on their knees among them, exhorted the women “to call louder and louder on the Lord, until he came upon them.” In the flickering illumination of torches and candles, Ferrall left the meeting at two o’clock in the morning while the worshipers, unaffected by fatigue, continued their frantic jerking, canting, and bold acclamations of God, Jesus, and glory.

By all accounts, Ann Rutledge was a true believer. According to her sister Sally, she was “sincerely religious.” There was a hint, too, that she often did good works as an expression of her faith, but relatives and friends made plain that her gentleness and kindness were genuine traits of her character and not simply outward manifestations of her Christian piety. She was a committed Cumberland Presbyterian, and she was also a good person. Her brother Robert echoed the sentiments of nearly every New Salemite when he said that she “possessed a remarkably amiable and loveable disposition.” When the Rutledge family attended church meetings or pitched their tents at the annual camp gatherings, their boarder Lincoln, in all likelihood, stayed home, went to work, or took a stroll down to the river or into the woods with a book in hand. There are no reports that Lincoln ever participated in a camp meeting, although his parents—hard-shelled Primitive Baptists—probably did in Kentucky and Indiana. When he knew Ann, he was a vociferous skeptic about Christianity, which leaves us wondering how Ann reconciled his unbelief with her own piety. It’s a mystery about the couple that will never be solved.

Before any hint of a romance between Ann and Lincoln revealed itself, she was wooed by several men in New Salem, all of whom pursued her as a potential wife. One of them gained the most success—John McNeil, an ambitious merchant who always kept his eye on the main chance. Sometime in 1832, probably during the summer, McNeil set his sights on courting Ann Rutledge. Ann appeared to be in love with her new swain, whom family members regarded as “an excellent young man,” except for her father who had little use for him. The size of McNeil’s personal savings—estimated by neighbors at $10,000 or more, but probably considerably less than that—may have made him look like a very good match for any of the young women in Sangamon County. Certainly Ann Rutledge did not fall in love with him for his looks. Herndon described McNeil as “a spare tall bony man, somewhat angular . . . a plucky—brave—businessman.” A brief courtship led to their formal engagement. If nothing else, McNeil, in Herndon’s opinion, was “honest—fair and manly in all his dealings.” That honesty prompted him to tell his fiancée in confidence that McNeil was not his real name.

Ann must have been thunderstruck by this news, although it had already begun to leak out in some circles, and she hoped that her betrothed had a good explanation. What he told her, in all its details, cannot be known, but variations of his story were passed on to Herndon and others. His name, he said, was actually John McNamar. He came to Illinois from upstate New York, where his father and family had suffered financial ruin and loss of status. Determined to be the sole agent by which he would remedy his family’s financial losses, he left New York, spent some time in St. Louis, and eventually found his way to Illinois, settling in New Salem, where he smelled the sweet aroma of business opportunity. He changed his name, he said, because he did not want his family to find him, which seems odd and suspicious. More likely, he was trying to hide from creditors back East rather than his family. At first, Ann accepted McNamar’s explanation of his circumstances and the reasons behind his alias. He soon learned, however, that his father and other family members in New York were seriously ill and required his assistance (how his family knew where to find him is a mystery). He informed Ann of his intentions to leave New Salem, take care of his family in New York, and eventually return with them, at which time he would marry her. How she took this news is not known. Presumably she did the only thing she could—persevere until McNamar came back to New Salem.

McNamar departed from Illinois in October 1832, and the year drifted slowly to an end. Alone with her thoughts, Ann waited and waited. She began to show signs of strain. McNamar’s deceit “opened Ann[’]s Eyes,” said Jasper Rutledge, one of her first cousins. She grew more suspicious as to why he thought it necessary to hide who he really was. During the extent of his absence, she received “at least one letter” from him. He told her of his father’s death and how he had been detained settling the estate and taking care of his ill family. But she heard no more from him after that. Two years had passed since McNamar’s departure. From all reports, Ann seems to have given up hope of ever seeing him again. She and Lincoln began a relationship that involved more than friendship. Rumors spread in the village that the two had become engaged. Neighbors reported, however, that Ann became burdened with a sense of guilt and feelings of anxiety, for her betrothal to McNamar had not been dissolved. Eventually, Ann overcame her distress and validated the rumors, confessing to family and friends that she and Lincoln were indeed engaged to be married as soon as she could attend and graduate from the Female Academy in Jacksonville and he could establish a law practice. Then in the summer of 1835, a season of illness and death in the Sangamon Valley, Ann fell seriously ill.

At age twenty-two, Ann probably contracted typhoid, a deadly illness for which there was no known cure. Word was sent to Lincoln, who was away from the village at the time, that she wanted desperately to see him. He was found, and he returned to New Salem in time to have a last conversation with his beloved. No one knows what they privately said to each other. Soon after their final meeting, Ann succumbed to her disease and died on August 25, 1835. She was buried near the Rutledge farm at the Old Concord Burial Ground, close to where she and her family had attended camp meetings. In his grief, Lincoln fell into a deep depression—so deep, in fact, that his neighbors worried about his state of mind. He recovered after a few weeks, but there’s a bit of evidence, offered by Isaac Cogdal to Herndon in 1865 or 1866, that suggests Lincoln remembered her fondly for the rest of his life. It was only after her death that McNamar returned to New Salem and learned that his fiancée was no more.

The Rutledge family and their New Salem friends turned Ann Rutledge into a saint of sorts, which she was not. All the praise for her exquisite beauty and her angelic demeanor suggests that her beatification actually took place after her early death and, perhaps, because of it. While history has left more of her behind than anyone might reasonably expect, she still remains something of a shadow thrown across the landscape of Sangamon County. No letters or diaries written by her survive, if any ever existed at all, so there is nothing to reveal who she may have been privately, down where her secret self lived, except that we know she held dear her faith in God and that Abraham Lincoln loved her. Did she love Lincoln? There is surprisingly no direct evidence that she did, other than her willingness to become his fiancée. Nevertheless, her youngest sister, Sarah Rutledge Saunders, said this to William Barton, a Lincoln biographer: “Lincoln loved her sincerely, and she gave to him undivided affection.”

Yet while all the enduring evidence comes from family and neighbors who tried to recall her very best qualities long after her fairly brief residence in New Salem, a glimpse of Ann Rutledge—something more than a wispy shadow—can be seen in the words people used to describe her and in the accounts they left of her romantic encounters during her late teens and early twenties. A full illumination of the young woman shines through in these reminiscences, despite the best attempts of nearly everyone to keep the memory of Ann one-dimensional. The often-piecemeal accounts of her response to forces outside her control were things she would have understood as God’s will.

Glenn W. LaFantasie is the Richard Frockt Family Professor of Civil War History Emeritus at Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green. He is the author of several books about Gettysburg and is presently writing a book about Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. He is also editor of the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association.