Affidavit of Samuel Rogers, [2 June 1834]1
I do hereby certify that I, as one of the trustees appointed by court to: superintend
the affairs of Township No 18 North of Range 6 West, relative to the sixteenth Section of the same, have expended
the amount of eight days time in attending to that duty—2
Samuel Rogers1Abraham Lincoln wrote the entirety of this document, including Rogers’s signature.
On Monday, June 2, 1834, the Sangamon County Commissioners Court allowed Rogers $4.50
for acting as trustee.
Sangamon County Commissioners Court, Record Book D, Manuscripts Division, Abraham
Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield IL, 81.
2The land described here is Indian Creek Township, which is located in present-day
Menard County, several miles east of Petersburg.
In 1818, when Congress passed the act enabling the Illinois Territory to become a state, it granted to each township in the state the proceeds of the
sale of land in that township’s Section 16. This money became known as the common
school fund. Each township appointed a board to supervise the expenditure of the proceeds.
“An Act to Enable the People of the Illinois Territory to Form a Constitution and
State Government, and for the Admission of Such State into the Union on an Equal Footing
with the Original States,” 18 April 1818, Statutes at Large of the United States 3 (1846):428-31; W. L. Pillsbury, “Early Education in Illinois,” Sixteenth Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State
of Illinois (Springfield, IL: H. W. Rokker, 1886), 106-7.
Handwritten Document Signed with a Representation, 1 page(s), Meisei University (Tokyo, Japan).