Globe Tavern Historical Marker
Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois
Marker Inscription
On this site stood the Globe Tavern the home of Abraham Lincoln and his wife from the time of their marriage on November 4, 1842 until May 2, 1844. Here their first child was born.
The Story
In November 1842 a young Springfield lawyer named Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd and brought her to board at the Globe Tavern, a modest inn that stood on this spot. The newlyweds lived here through the spring of 1844, and it was under this roof that their first son, Robert, was born. It was the couple's first home together, years before the White House.
Why it matters
This unassuming boardinghouse site anchors the earliest chapter of the Lincoln family's private life, a reminder that a future president began married life in rented rooms above a tavern.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1840s, Springfield, Illinois, was a bustling young capital on the prairie. The seat of state government had moved here only a few years earlier, and the town was filling with lawyers, legislators, and the ambitious energy of a place on the rise. It was a community small enough that everyone knew everyone, yet increasingly important to the life of the state.
For a young couple starting out, a boardinghouse was a common and respectable first home. The Globe Tavern was one such inn — a modest establishment where newlyweds and travelers alike could rent rooms and take their meals. Setting up house in rented rooms above a tavern was an ordinary way for a striving young couple to begin.
This was the world of a rising Springfield lawyer in 1842: professionally busy, socially connected, but far from wealthy, making a start in the practical, unglamorous way that most people did.
People & events
On November 4, 1842, a Springfield lawyer named Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd, and the couple came to board at the Globe Tavern, which stood on this site. It was their first home together, years before national fame and the White House.
They lived here through the spring of 1844, and it was under this roof that their first child, a son named Robert, was born. The everyday texture of early married life — sharing rented rooms, welcoming a first baby — unfolded in this ordinary inn.
The people named on the marker are the young family at the start of everything: Abraham, Mary, and the infant Robert. What makes the site moving is precisely its modesty. These are not the figures of monuments and paintings yet, but a lawyer, his new wife, and their newborn, beginning ordinary lives in a boardinghouse.
Its place in the American story
This unassuming site anchors the earliest chapter of one of the most consequential private lives in American history. Long before he became president, Abraham Lincoln was a young husband and new father boarding at a tavern, and remembering that is its own kind of lesson.
The nation tends to meet its great figures already grown into legend. A site like this restores the human scale: a president's marriage began in rented rooms, his first child was born in a modest inn, and his family's story started in circumstances no grander than those of his neighbors.
That ordinariness is exactly why the place matters. It connects the towering later story to a recognizable, human beginning, reminding visitors that even the most storied American lives started somewhere plain.
If you visit
The tavern itself is long gone, so what you'll find is the site where it once stood — a spot in Springfield marked to say that history began here quietly. The reward is imaginative: picture a modest inn, a young couple's rented rooms, and the ordinary bustle of boardinghouse life.
Let the dates on the marker ground you. November 1842 to May 1844 is a short span, but it holds a marriage's beginning and a first child's birth — the private foundation beneath a very public later life.
It belongs on any tour of Lincoln's Springfield, and it's worth visiting early in such a walk. Start with this humble beginning, and the grander Lincoln sites you see afterward gain a deeper resonance, because you'll have seen where the family's story actually began — above a tavern, in rented rooms, at the very start.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- Kidzeum of Health and Sciencenearby · 412 East Adams Street, Springfield, IL
- Old State Capitol0.1 mi away · 1 North Old State Capitol Plaza, Springfield, IL
- Lincoln Herndon Law Office0.2 mi away
- The Pharmacy Gallery & Art Space0.2 mi away · 623 East Adams Street, Springfield, IL
- Union Station0.3 mi away · 223 North 6th Street, Springfield, IL
- Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum0.3 mi away · 212 North 6th Street, Springfield, IL
Attractions
- Governor's Mansion0.3 mi away · 410 East Jackson Street, Springfield, IL
- Lincoln's Home0.4 mi away · 413 South 8th Street, Springfield, IL
- Adventure Village2.2 mi away
- Route 66 Experience2.3 mi away
- High Dive Show2.4 mi away
- Milk a Cow2.4 mi away
Food & drink
- JP Kelly'snearby · 300 East Adams Street, Springfield, IL
- Custom Cup Coffeenearby · 319 East Monroe Street, Springfield, IL
- D H Brown'snearby · 231 East Monroe Street, Springfield, IL
- Long Nine Junctionnearby · 5 West Old State Capitol Plaza, Springfield, IL
- Cliquenearby · 411 East Washington Street, Springfield, IL
- Replay Lounge0.1 mi away · 217 South 5th Street, Springfield, IL
Places to stay
- Statehouse Inn0.2 mi away · 101 East Adams Street, Springfield, IL
- President Abraham Lincoln Hotel, Doubletree by Hilton0.3 mi away · 701 East Adams Street, Springfield, IL
- Mansion View Inn0.3 mi away · 529 South 4th Street, Springfield, IL
- Carpenter Street Hotel0.5 mi away · 525 North 6th Street, Springfield, IL
- Pasfield House Inn0.5 mi away · 525 South Pasfield Street, Springfield, IL
- Inn at 8350.6 mi away · 835 South 2nd Street, Springfield, IL
Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Abraham Lincoln
- · Mary Todd Lincoln
- · Robert Todd Lincoln
Related events
- · Marriage of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Sesquicentennial Gates
Bloomington, IL
These gates mark the 150th anniversary of a university founded in Bloomington in 1850, when Illinois was still a young prairie state building its first colleges. Standing at the corner of Empire and Park Streets, the sesquicentennial gates tie a modern campus back to its mid-nineteenth-century roots. They celebrate a century and a half of teaching in the heart of central Illinois.
John Milton Gregory
Urbana, IL
This marker honors John Milton Gregory, the educator who became the first Regent of the University of Illinois when it opened in 1867 as the Illinois Industrial University. Gregory championed a broad education blending practical and classical learning, and by his own wish he was buried on the campus he helped create. His grave sits amid the university he shaped.
Roger Ebert Childhood Home
Urbana, IL
This modest Urbana house was the boyhood home of Roger Ebert (1942–2013), who grew up in this university town and went on to become one of America's most widely read and influential film critics. Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, he became the first film critic ever awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, and his televised reviews brought serious film conversation into millions of living rooms. The unassuming setting is a reminder that a national cultural voice began on an ordinary Midwestern street.
Tompkins Concert Shell Site
Saint Louis County, MO
From 1951 to 1965 this spot held an open-air concert shell built by friends of Benoist Tompkins, a founder and steadfast supporter of the Little Symphony Association. In the postwar decades, community bandshells like this one brought live orchestral music into public parks, part of a broad flowering of civic arts culture across suburban America. The structure is gone, but the marker keeps the memory of the music — and the man who championed it — alive.