Hainesville, Illinois: Abraham Lincoln Slept Here?

From Wikipedia.

Village in Avon Township, lake County, Illinois.  1.88 square miles, 2010 population:  3,597.

I will give information not previously recorded in this blog.

It is reported that Elijah Haines  met Abraham Lincoln in 1847 and they became friends.  It is even mentioned that Lincoln spent the night in Hainesville a few times.

In 1847, construction on the Lake-McHenry Plank Road began and by 1851 was completed to Squaw Creek, west of Hainesville.

The village became a thriving community, but all but disappeared from the map until recent years.  In 1899, the Milwaukee Road railroad expanded to Lake County and provided convenient transportation from there to Chicago.

Local land owner and general store proprietor George Battershall asked for a lot of money for the railroad to built a station in Hainesville, but Amarias M. White, an early settler in what would become Round Lake (to the west of Hainesville) knew that a station would spark growth and attracted the station with free land.

This caused Hainesville businesses to move to Round Lake and neighboring Grayslake.  The Hainesville Post Office closed in 1919 and the school became part of the Round Lake system.

Hainesville essentially became little more than a crossroads.  However, in the last 30 years there has been a huge amount of suburban subdivision growth and the village is, as they say, back on the map.

So, Did Abe Sleep in Hainesville?  --Old Secesh