In 1954, the State of Illinois was responsible for maintaining the only home that PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN ever owned, located at 8th and Jackson Streets, Springfield, Illinois.

On March 24, 1954, Harry C. Jorgensen, a Springfield Mason Contractor, submitted a proposal to furnish all labor and material necessary to complete the brickwork and underpinning according to specifications on the job known as: ABRAHAM LINCOLN HOME PROJECT, located at: 8th & Jackson Streets, Springfield, IL, for the sum of $2,540.00, plus extras, as listed.
The proposal was accepted on May 18, 1954 by Chas. P. Fowler.

While completing the masonry contract, a visiting tourist to the HOME, offered Mr. Jorgensen $5.00 for a chip from the brick debris. Jorgensen was responsible to re-use all whole bricks and remove the broken bricks with other debris. After the $5.00 offer, Harry Jorgensen had his son Elmer take the brick parts to their warehouse, where Elmer cut the broken bricks into small segments. Mr. Harry Jorgensen began marketing the brick segments. About a year later, Mr. Jorgensen passed on and Elmer Jorgensen sold the brick segments and family interest to a local Jeweler, Thomas E. Heinemann, who began marketing the bricks as paperweights and desk sets. When Mr. Heinemann passed on in the 1970’s, the family stored the brick segments.

In 1988, the Heinemann family contacted Phil Wagner, the General Chairman of the “Lincoln Post Road Project” and Organizer of the Athens, IL, “Lincoln Long Nine Museum,” and sold all their interest and inventory of the LINCOLN BRICK SEGMENTS to Mr. Wagner.

In the fall of 2001 Elmer Jorgensen furnished Phil Wagner with a copy of the contract and a picture of Elmer working on one of the projects of the May 18, 1954 contract. The north-east corner of LINCOLN’S HOME is shown in the photo.