Taylorville may go crazy over Lincoln-pig statue

By TONY REID - H&R Staff Writer

TAYLORVILLE - After Monte Siegrist agreed to bankroll a statue project that wound up showing Abraham Lincoln persuading a pig to be quiet, one burning question remained: Had Monte gone hog wild?

The good news is no, he's not crazy. And, unlike most of us, he can back that up with a professional opinion: He's seen a psychiatrist and been declared in full command of the better angels of his nature.

At 2 p.m. Saturday you can judge the sanity of what his money has wrought when the life-size Lincoln statue is unveiled amid sparkling ceremony on the lawn of the Taylorville Courthouse. Called "The Last Stop," the creation commemorates the 450-mile circuit Lincoln used to ride as a lawyer more than 150 years ago when justice was a road show that toured the small towns of the prairie.

Taylorville was Lincoln's final gig on the muddy ride to his Springfield home, and squealing pigs rooting about under the courthouse floorboards were a major legal technicality in the frontier 1850s. The noise was so bad on one occasion that the affable Abe jokingly asked the judge for a "Writ of Quietus" to shut them up - hence the new statue, executed by noted Lincoln sculptor and Decatur resident, John McClarey.

But when the idea of a statue was first trotted out three years ago as part of celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the present Taylorville courthouse, something much bigger was planned - a Lincoln on horseback, circuit-riding his way to glory.

The price tag for that might have topped $250,000 and, as local civic leaders looked for a way to pay for it, Monte decided it was time to break the habits of a lifetime and step forward with his wallet to hog the limelight. For a shrewd local builder who buys his clothes at Wal-Mart and drives used cars, volunteering to hand over a quarter-million dead presidents was about as out of character as Lincoln saluting the Confederate flag.

Monte justified it all by saying it was time he gave something back to the town that first nurtured his Swiss immigrant grandfather in the 1880s and had been good to the Siegrists over four subsequent generations. "I want the statue to call attention to Taylorville and make visitors see that the town motto 'Taylorville: a great place to live' is really true," he said.

His wife just thought his was nuts. And Lucy Siegrist is the one who insisted he get his head examined.

"I've never been struck by lightning," she said. "But when he told me out of a clear blue sky one day about paying for that statue, I imagine what I felt is what it feels like to be struck by a lightning bolt. He'd never, ever, ever, done anything like this before in the 52 years we've been married."

Her husband, however, emerged from the psychiatrist's office with a clean bill of health, at least verbally. "He just told me that paying for the statue was kind of an unusual thing for a man of my modest means to do," said Monte, 72, frowning at the memory. "But while he did say I wasn't crazy, he never actually gave me any papers to prove it."

Design work on the statue was then free to gallop forward, if slowly. A committee working with the sculptor began to finesse the details, and it became clear that not only was an equestrian Lincoln very expensive, but it had been done before. Everybody wanted to keep the circuit-riding flavor but they also wanted something unique and special. Carol Alexander, a committee member and president of the Taylorville Tourism Council, said designs metamorphosed through various stages including one that featured Lincoln next to a strikingly erect hitching post.

"It didn't look very good and, in fact, Lucy took one look at it and said 'Oh, my God, it's like a phallic symbol,' and that was the end of that," said Alexander. "Then, eventually, we hit on the pig idea, and that was it."

The price, while still snuffling-up a sizeable chunk of Monte's bank balance, has come down considerably south of $250,000. He loves the finished statue and, what's more important, Lucy has fallen in love with it, too. "It brought tears to my eyes when I saw it, John McClarey did such a wonderful job," said Lucy, 70. "I'm still shocked about the money, but I was very pleased to see it's bought something so beautiful."

Alexander says there were some naysayers muttering about Taylorville being branded the hog capital of Central Illinois but, like pearls before swine, she says they realized not what they saw.

"This statue is the only one in the world showing Lincoln with a pig, and one of very few showing Lincoln with a bemused expression on his face," she said.

"It's absolutely wonderful."

Tony Reid can be reached at treid@;herald-review.com or 421-7977.