I didn’t even know that there was an Abraham Lincoln museum in Peekskill until I bumped into it while wandering around. It’s not far from the metro north station (between S. Water Street and the train tracks) and at first I didn’t even notice it and walked right by. Trying to find something interesting I kept going, but finding nothing I turned back. Then I noticed an entrance to something and decided to walk down to see what it was. It turned out to be the Lincoln Depot Museum (to give it it’s full name). The museum is for now only open on Saturdays and Sunday and since I was there on Friday I couldn’t go in.

There is an interesting statue outside though. According to Wikipedia the story is as follows:

On February 19, 1861 President Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural train made a stop at the Peekskill Freight Depot, where he gave a brief speech. Approximately 1500 people, about half the city’s population at that time, attended the President’s visit. It is widely held that Lincoln made the stop on the request of his congressional colleague Congressman William Nelson from Westchester County, New York. In his speech, Lincoln requested support in the coming crisis – four states had already seceded from the Union by then. It was Lincoln’s only recorded appearance in Westchester County.) Lincoln’s stop in Peekskill was well documented by the press at the time: “Towards noon, quite a number came to the village from the country surrounding, and wended their way to the Depot.”;

After President Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, his funeral train retraced the route and stopped in Peekskill on the way back to Springfield.

The statue is by Richard Maslowski