Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near West Lerna Lerna, IL

Lerna is a tiny village in Coles County in east-central Illinois, part of the Charleston-Mattoon Micropolitan Statistical Area.

Lerna covers only about 0.12 square miles, which made its 226 residents in the 2020 census one of the more densely settled small villages in the county, at roughly 1,966 people per square mile.

The village was at its largest in 1900, when the census counted 396 people; the population has gradually declined since, from 322 in 2000 to 286 in 2010 and 226 in 2020.

In the 2000 census, Lerna's 322 residents lived in 112 households.

Lerna's fame comes from its Lincoln connection: Thomas Lincoln, father of President Abraham Lincoln, spent the later part of his life on a homestead a few miles from the village.

That homestead is now preserved as the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site, an 86-acre site just south of Lerna that draws tens of thousands of visitors a year.

Thomas Lincoln and his second wife, Sarah Bush Lincoln — Abraham Lincoln's stepmother — are buried in Shiloh Cemetery south of town.