Anna, Illinois
City: Anna
County: Union
State: Illinois
Lat/Long: 37.4500, -89.2333
Anna is located in southwestern Illinois, twenty-eight miles southwest of Marion. In 1853 the Illinois Central Railroad established the route of the railroad through Union County, and that same year local property owners decided to lay out a town along the path of the railroad at what is now Anna. The town was surveyed about 1853 and a plat was registered the following year under the name of Anna, in honor of the wife of property owner Winstead Davie. The Illinois Central soon established a train station in Anna with the name of Jonesboro Station, and a U.S. Post Office was established at Anna in 1855. Residents voted to incorporate the town in 1855, and the Illinois General Assembly chartered Anna as a town ten years later. Between 1855 and 1858 Anna was a temperance town, with an ordinance that limited the sale of alcohol except for medicinal use. Abraham Lincoln was reportedly a guest at the home of David L. Phillips in Anna on September 14, 1858, the night before the third Lincoln-Douglas Debate in Jonesboro. During the Civil War, Anna was the location of camps Anna and Douglas.
Merriam-Webster’s Geographical Dictionary , 3rd ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1997), 52; James N. Adams, comp., Illinois Place Names (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Society, 1989), 279, 310, 311; William Henry Perrin, ed., History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois (Chicago: O. L. Baskin, 1883), 371-74; Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832-1971, NARA Microfilm Publication, M841, 145 rolls, Records of the Post Office Department, RG 28, 1855-1865, 20a:137, National Archives Building, Washington, DC; George W. Smith, When Lincoln Came to Egypt (Herrin, IL: Trovilion Private Press, 1940), 120-24; The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 14 September 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-09-14; 15 September 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-09-15; “An Act to Incorporate the Town of Anna,” 16 February 1865, Private Laws of Illinois (1865), 2:342-46.