The Morrison Historical Society will host a program on Sunday, June 11, 2017, at 1:30 p.m., featuring Abraham Lincoln and his connections to the Mississippi River. The presentation will be held at Morrison’s Heritage Museum on Route 30, 202 E. Lincolnway, Morrison, IL. All programs offered by Morrison Historical Society are free and open to the public.
Doors open at 1:00. The building is available to all visitors, with a ramp at the back parking lot.
Ronald H. Koehn of Fulton, IL, a retired Social Sciences instructor, will present a PowerPoint program entitled “Abraham Lincoln’s River Connections.” President Abraham Lincoln of Illinois has become an iconic figure in American history, because of his tragic death on April 15, 1865, as the victim of an assassin’s bullet. During the next 152 years, a multitude of books about him have been published, covering virtually every aspect of his fascinating life, and new volumes are added each year. To date, there are more books written about Lincoln than any other American.
Most Americans (and many people outside of the United States) are familiar with the major roles that Lincoln played during his lifetime. However, there are some that are less familiar, or totally unknown, to the average American. Those Koehn will review in his presentation. For example, not once, but twice, Lincoln as a young man helped maneuver a flatboat laden with agricultural products on the long journey to the port of New Orleans, LA: once from southern Indiana and once from central Illinois. For a three-week period, he was employed as an assistant steamboat pilot on the Sangamon River.
Lincoln was an inventor who was issued an American patent, for a nautical device, while he was serving as a U. S. Representative from Illinois. He also played a crucial role on the defense team of lawyers in a major court case. It pitted Jacob S. Hurd and the steamboat interests on the Mississippi River against the Rock Island Bridge Company and the railroad interests.
Koehn earned two degrees from Illinois State University at Normal: a Bachelor of Science in Education degree with a major in History and a minor in Political Science, and a Master of Science degree in History. Before taking early retirement, he was employed by the River Bend Unit School District as a Social Studies instructor at Fulton High School, from 1974 to 2003, primarily teaching United States History, American Government, and Sociology.