Broadwell is a village in Logan County, Illinois, United States. The population was 136 at the 2020 census. Geography Broadwell is located in southwestern Logan County at (40.067366, -89.442710). Interstate 55 passes through the western side of the village, with access from Exit 119. I-55 leads northeast to Lincoln, the county seat, and to Bloomington, while to the southwest it leads to Springfield, the state capital. According to the 2010 census, Broadwell has a total area of , all land. History The village of Broadwell was platted in 1856 by William Broadwell and Jacob Eisiminger, which occurred in conjunction with the construction of the railroad linking Chicago and Springfield. Prior to the plat of the village, there was an inn three-quarters of a mile east of the present site, called "Tantivy" or "TAN-TI-VY". The name apparently derives from an old English hunting cry. Tantivy Lodge was in existence from about 1840 through the early 1950s; tradition states that Abraham Lincoln stopped there while traveling from Springfield to the Logan County courthouse at Postville (today a part of the newer city of Lincoln, Illinois) while Lincoln rode the judicial circuit as a lawyer. It is recorded (with greater certainty) that the (later) central Illinois cattle and land baron, John Dean Gillett, proposed marriage to his future wife, Lemira Parke, at the Tantivy cabin c. 1840. It is likely that Tantivy was relocated by about one-eighth of a mile (from east to west) at least once during its existence. When Jacob Eisiminger was offered the honor of having the village named after him, he declined, stating that the new village would be handicapped with such an unusual name; accordingly, it was named Broadwell. William Broadwell (of Springfield) owned the original land, but had very little further connection with the village, and he later moved to Kansas; the Eisiminger family, however, were long-time merchants, postmasters and schoolteachers in the village. Leola Eisiminger, the last member of the family bearing this name, died on August 16, 2005. Broadwell became a shipping point for hogs, corn, wheat and later soybeans. The village and township has never known any great period of economic boom or bust. The surrounding Broadwell Township features some of the finest productive agricultural soils in North America. The village was located directly on historic U.S. Route 66, from 1926 to 1978; today the limited-access Interstate 55 is located on the western edge