Lost Macon County

H.I. Baldwin has purchased the house and lot adjoining his property in 452 West Main street on the east. The purchase was made from Miss Ella Glore.

Mr. Baldwin immediately will have the house torn down and will add the ground to his garden. The Baldwin garden already is one of the showplaces of Decatur.

The property now added to the garden formerly was part of the old homestead of Ichabod Baldwin, father of H.I. Baldwin. Ichabod Baldwin bought half of the block where the Baldwin house now stands from Mrs. Hanks in 1862. The original house at that time was a log cabin located in the center of the property. Timbers from the cabin were incoporated in the present Baldwin house.

It is a tradition of the place that Abraham Lincoln studied his law books under the trees there, when the Hanks lived in the cabin, and made the homestead his headquarters when in Decatur.

Later most of the tract was sold and subdivided. A good many years ago H.I. Baldwin took back the lot immediately adjoining his house on the east and incorporated this space in the garden. Now the second lot to the east is being added.

The little house on the second lot has been known to a generation of Decatur folks as the home of Mrs. Alice G. Evans, Decatur librarian, and Miss Glore, who lived there together. Following Mrs. Evan's death Miss Glore lived in the house alone. Recently she decided to dispose of the property and live elsewhere.

It is the plan of the Baldwins not to screen their enlarged garden from the street, but to share it with all the people of the city, as has been the case with the small garden in the past.

Decatur Evening Herald, Wednesday, 13 May 1931

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