Frame courthouses were especially vulnerable to fire, and county leaders began looking for a community that would subsidize the construction of a masonry structure.

Returning to Illinois in 1849, he resumed the practice of law in the Eighth Circuit, and often visited the Mount Pulaski courthouse.

Mount Pulaski is located 25 miles (40 km) north of Springfield, a day's journey by the horse and light buggy that Lincoln used.

After 1853, the building served as a school, the Mount Pulaski city hall and jail, and the local post office.

[2] Illinois Governor Henry Horner launched a statewide search in the 1930s for surviving public buildings with which Lincoln had been familiar.