A venerable coffee urn that began its journey through Illinois history before Abraham Lincoln was president has returned to its Springfield roots.

Nineteen years after Lincoln departed the practice of John Stuart in 1841, the arrival to Stuart's firm of Christopher Columbus Brown in 1860 was a link in a series of ironies.

Born in Athens, Ill., in 1834, Brown was the son of a Sangamo Town justice of the peace. His brother tried to entice him into pharmacy, but Christopher opted for law and at age 21 attended law school at Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky., for one term in 1855.

He returned to Springfield the next year and began practicing law after passing an examination by Abraham Lincoln and William Herndon.

Licensed on April 3, 1856, Christopher Brown practiced briefly with another brother, David Brown, then spent a year in Cairo before returning. The partnership of Stuart, Edwards & Brown was formed Jan. 1, 1860.

When Christopher married Elizabeth Stuart in October 1859, Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln gave the new couple a silver-plate, Rococo revival coffee urn.

That very urn has come home, so to speak, by virtue of its recent donation to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, where it has been on display.

The Browns' son, Stuart Brown, was born Oct. 21, 1860, and he became a partner in 1886 in the firm that became Brown, Hay & Stephens in 1921. He married Kate Logan Hay on April 28, 1896.

Kate's brother, Logan Hay, joined the law firm in 1897, completing a chain that began in 1841. Hay was the grandson of Stephen Logan and an in-law of John Stuart – the two men in whose firms Lincoln had first practiced in Springfield.