Trent, Martin S.

Trent and his brother Alexander bought the New Salem store owned by Abraham Lincoln and William F. Berry in 1833. This may have been due to a lawsuit against Lincoln by the Trent brothers over an owed debt. The Trent brothers failed to make the store an ongoing concern, selling it to John McNeil, who moved it to Petersburg in 1837.

Benjamin P. Thomas, Lincoln's New Salem (Springfield, IL: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1934), 13, 37, 71; Molly McKenzie, "A Demographic Study of Select New Salem Precinct Residents" (Typescript, 1979), 109-11.