Today in 1809, the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.
The 16th President has plenty of nicknames: the Great Emancipator, Honest Abe, The Railsplitter, and more.
And if you go far enough into his backstory, you can call him Bartender In Chief.
That last nickname comes from a piece by Chicagoist, which took a deep dive into a lesser-known period of Lincoln’s life as a tavern owner.
This was in the 1830s, when a twentysomething Abe Lincoln settled in the small village of New Salem, Illinois.
An Abraham LinkedIn profile of this period would be pretty busy.
Lots of job-hopping.
This is when Lincoln split rails, served in the military and ran the local post office, among other jobs.
He also opened a store with one William F. Berry; it was partly a cafe and partly a lodge for travelers.
And it was a licensed tavern, meaning they could sell drinks for people to drink on site as well as selling bottles for customers to take home.
Though reportedly he spent a lot of his time there hanging out with the customers or reading.
As for his business partner, it’s said Berry had a drinking problem; he may have turned himself into the shop’s best customer.
So the Berry and Lincoln store didn’t last too long, and left Lincoln with about $1,100 of debt.
Fortunately he had better luck with his next license, which was in law: that’s how he became prominent in downstate Illinois, eventually becoming a state legislator, a member of Congress, and president of the United States.
And of course now, as they say, he belongs to the ages.
But a little bit of him belongs to the tavern.
This Saturday in Clear Lake, Iowa, it’s the Color The Wind Kite Festival.
This winter kite event puts some very colorful, very artistic and very big kites into the air.
And they choreograph the movements of these big kites to music for some very memorable performances.
Bartender-In-Chief: Abraham Lincoln Owned A Tavern (Chicagoist)
Annual Clear Lake Kite Festival
Backing our show on Patreon costs less per year than a bottle of cheap wine (we checked)
