Lincoln’s Pioneer Village Comes To Life

USPS Honors 16^th President With Special Postmark

ROCKPORT, IN — As part of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial, the U.S. Postal Service will honor the former president with a special postmark.

The Rockport Post Office honored Lincoln last year with a special postmark of his 1828 flatboat trip down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Now it will offer a special pictorial cancellation of the Rockport Lincoln Pioneer Village.

Constructed in 1932, the village was the vision of local artist George Honig. His idea was to replicate cabins that may have been in Rockport or on Little Pigeon Creek in Spencer County during the time Lincoln was growing up. The village is made up of 14 cabins, many of which feature the names of people who were neighbors of Lincoln between 1816 and 1830.

“We’ve just started to bring the village back to life,” said Lynnville, IN, Postmaster Diane Unfried, who’s a member of Rockport Lincoln Pioneer Village. “I went there when I was a girl in grade school. In fact, one of the cabins represented belonged to my grandfather’s great-great grandfather. His cabin was 4 miles south of the Lincoln cabin, so they became friends.”

This weekend Unfried’s group will hold an encampment of period demonstrators. The event will feature 3 to 5 minute songs about the Lincolns when they came from Kentucky to Indiana. The melodies will include the death of Lincoln’s mother, the marriage of Sarah Lincoln to Aaron Grigsby, and the flatboat trip from Rockport to New Orleans.

The Lincoln Bicentennial was launched on Feb. 12, 2008 at his birthplace in Hodgenville, KY, and concludes in February 2010.

Lincoln is regarded as our nation’s greatest president. He remains relevant today because of the ideals he loved and fostered: freedom, democracy and equal opportunity.

The special cancellation will be available at the village, 928 Fairground Drive, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 16.

Mail order requests for the special cancellation will be available for 45 days beginning May 16. Customers should allow at least a 2-inch by 4-inch space in the stamp area for the postmark and have postage applied to cards or letters before mailing them — inside another envelope — to the Post Office.

Send mail order requests to: Postmaster, Lincoln Pioneer Village Station, P.O. Box 9998, Rockport, IN 47635-9998.