VanBergen, Peter (Van Bergen)
b. 1800, in Catskill, New York; d. January 28, 1879, in Springfield, Illinois. VanBergen moved to Illinois in 1830. In 1850,
he was a U.S. Marshal for the District of Illinois, lived in Sangamon County,
Illinois, and owned real estate worth $15,000. VanBergen was a real estate broker in 1855, and in 1860 he was a farmer in
Sangamon
County. He was married with two children. In 1871, VanBergen was a stockholder and a member of the Sangamon County Agricultural
Board in Springfield. Although VanBergen sued Lincoln for unpaid bills while he was in New Salem, he and Lincoln later became
friends.
E. H. Hall, Springfield City Directory and Sangamon County Advertiser for 1855-6 (Springfield: Birchall
& Owen, 1855), 40; History of Sangamon County, Illinois (Chicago: Inter-state Publishing Company, 1881),
549; Sangamon County, Illinois, Seventh Census of the United States, 1850; Sangamon County, Illinois, Eighth Census of the
United
States, 1860; Joseph Wallace, Past and Present of the City of Springfield and Sangamon County, Illinois (Chicago:
The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1904), 2:1314-17; Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon's Informants:
Letters, Interviews, and Statements About Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 774.
Illustration courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL.