Macoupin County Courthouse The first courthouse was built of
logs on property that is now the City Square. Seth Hodges won
the contract for the structure. The record shows that
construction costs Ten years later, the county had outgrown this
18' x 24' log structure and made plans for a larger one on the
same site. The new brick building measured 50' x 50' and -
costing roughly $15,000 - was considerably more expensive than
the first. The contractors were Harbird Weatherford and
Jefferson Weatherford. Abraham Lincoln frequently represented
his clients in this courthouse. In fact, when the State
Preservation Agency examined the Courthouse records in the
1990's, they found over 3,000 documents with the signature of A.
Lincoln. Those original documents are now in Springfield, but
copies are on file in the Macoupin County Courthouse. The
courthouse that Lincoln practiced in no longer stands in the
center of town because shortly after the end of the Civil War,
in 1867, elected officials decided that the prosperous