What, you might ask, does the Pickering Barn have to do with Abraham Lincoln?

Tuesday, April 14, marked the 150th anniversary of the assassination of President Lincoln and April 9 marked the 150th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War.

Just a remote territory at the time of the outbreak of war, the region was largely untouched by its outbreak. Colonel Justus Steinberger determined Washington could only hope to raise three companies from resident settlers and, in the end, only two companies of the 1st Washington Territory infantry regiment were recruited from the area, the remaining soldiers having come from California.

Those soldiers did not battle the Confederate  States of America, instead protecting those territorial forts that had not already been abandoned and guarding the west’s communications lines from the perceieved threat of an American Indian attack.

However, over the course of the war, President Lincoln was responsible for the western arrival of William Pickering, the namesake of the Pickering Barn in Issaquah.

An English immigrant, Pickering moved to Illinois in 1821 and served in that state’s House of Representatives from 1842 to 1852.

Pickering would become an important figure in Lincoln’s Republican Party — and a personal friend of Lincoln himself — serving as a delegate to the national convention in 1860.

In 1862, Lincoln offered Pickering the choice of  taking a diplomatic position for the United States’ relations with the British Empire by becoming a member of the country’s United States Ministry in England; or he could become Washington’s territorial governor, which had proved a tricky position to fill: native Kentuckian Richard Gholson resigned from the position in 1861 during the leadup to the Civil War and the position remained vacant for more than a year when appointed replacement William H. Wallace chose instead to represent the territory in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Pickering took the governorship, moving to Olympia in June 1862 and serving until 1866.

Pickering’s accomplishments included the connection of the territory to a transcontinental telegraph line and the establishment of government services for the mentally ill.

Before leaving Washington following the end of his term to return to Illinois, Pickering purchased land in the Squak Valley from area homesteaders. This land would eventually become the site of the Pickering Farm, one of the state’s largest dairy farms.

The Pickering Barn was constructed in 1878, five years after Pickering’s death, and the dairy barn would not be constructed until early in the next century, in 1906.

Today, the barn is owned by the city of Issaquah and used as a rental property for  weddings and other events, as well as serving as the site of the Issaquah Farmers Market.