"We landed at the New Salem mill about the 19th April and got fast on Rutledges Mill dam." Interview of John Hanks by William H. Herndon, 1865-66, in Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 457.

Lincoln gets his first view of New Salem. In his address March 9, 1832 he said: "The time at which we crossed the mill dam, being in the last days of April, the water was lower than it had been since the breaking of winter in February, or than it was for several weeks after." Communication to the People of Sangamo County, 9 March 1832, CW, 1:5-9.