first met her she was nineteen years old, and as fresh as a flower.
Many of those who knew her at that time have left tributes to her
beauty and gentleness, and even to-day there are those living who talk
of her with moistened eyes and softened tones. "She was a beautiful
girl," says her cousin, James McGrady Rutledge, "and as bright as
she was pretty. She was well educated for that early day, a good
conversationalist, and always gentle and cheerful. A girl whose
company people liked." So fair a maid was not, of course, without
suitors. The most determined of those who sought her hand was one John
McNeill, a young man who had arrived in New Salem from New York soon
after the founding of the town. Nothing was known of his antecedents,
and no questions were asked. He was understood to be merely one of
the thousands who had come West in search of fortune. That he was
intelligent, industrious, and frugal, with a good head for business,
was at once apparent; for he and Samuel Hill opened a general store
and they soon doubled their capital, and their business continued
to grow marvellously. In four years from his first appearance in the
settlement, besides having a half-interest in the store, he owned a
large farm a few miles north of New Salem. His neighbors believed him
to be worth about twelve thousand dollars.

John McNeill was an unmarried man--at least so he represented himself
to be--and very soon after becoming a resident of New Salem he formed
the acquaintance of Ann Rutledge, then a girl of seventeen. It was a
case of love at first sight, and the two soon became engaged, in spite
of the rivalry of Samuel Hill, McNeill's partner. But Ann was as yet
only a young girl; and it was thought very sensible in her and very
gracious and considerate in her lover that both acquiesced in the
wishes of Ann's parents that, for some time at least, the marriage be
postponed.