Nathan Cromwell lot

This lot was part of the estate of Pekin co-founder Nathan Cromwell (1784-1836), and Abraham Lincoln was retained as an attorney in the settlement of Cromwell's estate. Pioneer traditions dating from no later than the 1850s relate that Cromwell's wife Ann Eliza (after whom Ann Eliza Street is named) was the one who selected "Pekin" as the name of the new town site in January of 1830, and that Ann Eliza also was behind the decision to name many of the streets in the Original Town of Pekin after the wives and daughters of Pekin's pioneer settlers.

Nathan Cromwell was a land speculator who owned many lots in early Pekin. He died in St. Louis, Missouri, while on his way to Texas to start another land speculation scheme there. Cromwell is also known to history as the (purported) owner of an African-American indentured servant named Nance Legins-Costley (1813-1892). Cromwell purchased Nance in Springfield and brought her to Pekin in 1829. Nance, however, insisted that she was free because she had never given her consent to become an indentured servant as Illinois law required of all contracts of indentured servitude.

Before leaving for St. Louis, Cromwell sold Nance to another early Pekin settler named David Bailey, who promised to pay Cromwell $376.48 for Nance. However, when he learned Nance insisted she was free, Bailey (of an abolitionist family), let Nance live as a free woman and declined to pay off the promissory note to the Cromwell Estate. The Cromwell Estate then sued Bailey in Tazewell County Circuit Court in the 1838-9 case of Cromwell & McNaghton v. Bailey. The firm of Stuart & Lincoln represented Bailey, and Lincoln presented clear evidence that there was no proof Nance was ever Cromwell's indentured servant, but nevertheless the court ruled in favor of the Cromwell Estate and ordered Bailey to pay $431.97.

Bailey then appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court in the 1841 case of Bailey v. Cromwell & McNaghton. During arguments on 23 July 1841, Lincoln pointed out that the Chief Justice had no papers saying he was an indentured servant and therefore he was considered a free man; that several lawyers in the court had no indentured servitude papers and they were free men; and Nance had no such papers either, so the Court must rule that she is a free woman. Justice Sidney Breese therefore ruled that Nance and her three children Amanda, Eliza Jane, and William Henry were free. Thus, Nance and her children were the first African-American slaves to be freed through the direct help of Abraham Lincoln. (Her son William Henry Costley later served in the 29th U.S. Colored Troops in the Civil War, and was present in Galveston, Texas, at the first Juneteenth.)

Of this case, John J. Duff in his book, "A. Lincoln, Prairie Lawyer" (1960), pages 86-87, wrote:

"One of the memorable cases which commanded Lincoln's attention during the court's summer term of 1841 was that of Bailey v. Cromwell, argued July twenty-third, and involving his first encounter with the legal aspects of slavery. Early in 1839 an action was brought by the administrators of Nathan Cromwell against David Bailey in the Circuit Court of Tazewell County, then held at Tremont, upon a promissory note made by Bailey and given to Cromwell in payment for a Negro girl named Nance. The seller, who represented that the subject of the sale was indentured to him and still had about seven years to serve, agreed to furnish the purchaser with proof that the girl was in fact a slave and bound to servitude. This Cromwell failed to do and, the girl having left Bailey's service in the meantime, when the note matured the latter refused to pay.

"Upon the trial, the defendant showed by the testimony of the girl and one Benjamin Kellogg that Nance had repeatedly stated that she would not work without pay, and had received from Cromwell, who operated a store, both goods and money in return for services rendered.

"Judgment was rendered by Judge William Thomas in favor of the plaintiff for $431.97. An appeak was taken to the Supreme Court, where Lincoln, representing the defendant, argued that the note was without consideration and hence void, inasmuch as it was given, in a free state, as the purchase price of a human being who was not legally the subject of sale. He maintained that the girl was free by virtue of both the Ordinance of 1787 and the constitution of the state prohibiting slavery. The Court, in an opinion by Judge Breese, reversed the lower court. The case, in which Lincoln was opposed by Logan, established the broad principle that 'the presumption of the law in Illinois is that every person is free without regard to color,' and 'the sale of a free person is illegal.'"

Lincoln and his law partner Stuart both participated in this case.

The accompanying illustrations include a drawing by the late Dale Kuntz depicting what Nance Legins-Costley may have looked like during the course of the trials that confirmed that she and her children were free. The other illustration is a detail from an 1877 aerial map of Pekin showing what this particular lot, formerly the possession of Nathan Cromwell, looked like at that time.