The license seems to have stimulated the business, for the firm
concluded to hire a clerk. The young man who secured this position was
Daniel Green Burner, son of Isaac Burner, at whose house Lincoln for
a time boarded. He is still living on a farm near Galesburg, Illinois,
and is in the eighty-second year of his age. "The store building of
Berry and Lincoln," says Mr. Burner, "was a frame building, not very
large, one story in height, and contained two rooms. In the little
back room Lincoln had a fireplace and a bed. There is where we slept.
I clerked in the store through the winter of 1834, up to the 1st of
March. While I was there they had nothing for sale but liquors. They
may have had some groceries before that, but I am certain they had
none then. I used to sell whiskey over their counter at six cents a
glass--and charged it, too. N.A. Garland started a store, and Lincoln
wanted Berry to ask his father for a loan, so they could buy out
Garland; but Berry refused, saying this was one of the last things he
would think of doing."
Among the other persons yet living who were residents with Lincoln of
New Salem or its near neighborhood are Mrs. Parthenia W. Hill, aged
seventy-nine years, widow of Samuel Hill, the New Salem merchant;
James McGrady Rutledge, aged eighty-one years; John Potter, aged
eighty-seven years; and Thomas Watkins, aged seventy-one years--all
now living at Petersburg, Illinois. Mrs. Hill, a woman of more than
ordinary intelligence, did not become a resident of New Salem until
1835, the year in which she was married. Lincoln had then gone out
of business, but she knew much of his store. "Berry and Lincoln,"
she says, "did not keep any dry goods. They had a grocery, and I have
always understood they sold whiskey." Mr. Rutledge, a nephew of James
Rutledge the tavern-keeper, has a vivid recollection of the store.
He says: "I have been in Berry and Lincoln's store many a time. The
building was a frame--one of the few frame buildings in New Salem.
There were two rooms, and in the small back room they kept their
whiskey. They had pretty much everything, except dry goods--sugar,
coffee, some crockery, a few pairs of shoes (not many), some farming
implements, and the like. Whiskey, of course, was a necessary part of
their stock. I remember one transaction in particular which I had with
them. I sold the firm a load of wheat, which they turned over to the
mill." Mr. Potter, who remembers the morning when Lincoln, then a
stranger on his way to New Salem, stopped at his father's house
and ate breakfast, knows less about the store, but says: "It was a
grocery, and they sold whiskey, of course." Thomas Watkins says that
the store contained "a little candy, tobacco, sugar, and coffee, and
the like;" though Mr. Watkins, being then a small boy, and living a
mile in the country, was not a frequent visitor at the store.