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Looking for Lincoln: Globe Tavern:
The Globe Tavern... The Lincolns lived here from November 1842 until the winter or early spring of 1844. At that time, the tavern consisted of two buildings joined as a "T", with the older portion extending out behind the newer addition (in which the Lincolns lived) which fronted Adams Street. Whig politicians tended to patronize the Globe, especially when the state legislature was in session. Proprietorship changed hands several times. Cyrus G. Saunders ran the establishment when the Lincolns moved in. ... In 1842, a widow Mrs. Sarah Beck, took over the management.
Abraham and Mary Lincoln spent their wedding night at the Globe Tavern, and lived here for the first 12 to 14 months of their marriage.
It was not the fanciest hotel in Springfield, but Abraham considered it "very well kept. Their room -- 8 by 14 feet long -- was the same one that Mary's sister Francis had occupied for three years as a young bride. Meals were shared with other boarders at a common dining table. The $8.00 monthly rent also included laundry service. Here their first child, Robert, was born. The situation was not ideal for a young mother and baby. Quarters were close. The mostly male guests could be noisy, And the tavern was a stage line office, so every time a coach arrived a bell would ring calling stable boys to come care for the horses.
Undoubtedly, it was difficult to calm a fussy baby into slumber or to keep a sleeping baby from awaking. Guests reportedly complained about Robert's crying. This may have been a reason why the Lincolns moved and rented a nearby cottage in early 1844. When Lincoln's friends David Davis and his wife lodged here later that year, Mrs. Davis complained that the proprietors scrimped on candles and used to much baking soda in their cakes, turning them "quite yellow."
It was not uncommon in the early 19th century for newlyweds to start married life in a boarding house out of economic necessity, even though the evolving customs of polite society discouraged it. Social reformers feared that such circumstances prevented young wives from learning household duties, and that they would become idle and indolent, or even lose their virtue in the predominantly masculine environment. The daughter of a political enemy later claimed that her mother attended to Mary and her baby daily in the month after Robert was born, and that she, at six years of age, was permitted to tend Robert -- on occasion dragging him through a hole in the tavern yard fence to lay him down in the tall prairie grass. How, she later wondered, could Mary have trusted "a particularly small six year old with this charge?" |