Warburton, George

Died: 1840-07-11 Sangamon County, Illinois

In the spring of 1831, the county commissioners of Sangamon County authorized Warburton to keep a tavern and a store in New Salem, Illinois. Within less than a year, he sold his store. The following year, he purchased more than two hundred acres of public land near what would become Petersburg, Illinois. He founded the town of Petersburg with Peter Lukins. He served in the Black Hawk War in Abraham Lincoln's company. He sold his land and interest in Petersburg in 1833 and may have left the area for a time. Known for his intemperance, Warburton later drowned in the Sangamon River in six inches of water, "by his own act."

Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales, Sangamon [Menard] County, 68:121, 126, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Benjamin P. Thomas, Lincoln's New Salem (Springfield, IL: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1934), 6-7, 12, 54; The History of Menard and Mason Counties, Illinois (Chicago: O. L. Baskin, 1879), 203, 289, 293; Sangamo Journal (Springfield, IL), 17 July 1840, 2:6; Thomas P. Reep, Lincoln at New Salem (Petersburg, IL: Old Salem Lincoln League, 1927), 115; Molly McKenzie, "A Demographic Study of Select New Salem Precinct Residents," (Typescript, 1979), 113-18; Isaac H. Elliott, Record of the Services of Illinois Soldiers in the Black Hawk War, 1831-32, and in the Mexican War, 1846-8 (Springfield, IL: H. W. Rokker, 1882), 101.