(Photo By Flickr User Quinn Dombrowski)

A few weeks back, we reported on a blog about students at Butler Elementary and other Sangamon County Schools were launching the “Illinois Proud Penny Drive” to help purchase a historic Abraham Lincoln artifact.

The Lincoln artifact contains the certification of Lincoln’s “good moral character” and permitted him to start his law career in Springfield, IL.

Just in case you are wondering about this report, the numbers are in and a countywide penny drive tied to Illinois’s Bicentennial has met its goal, and then some.

According to the State-Journal Register, 60 Sangamon County schools took part in the effort to raise $15,000 (that’s one-point-five million pennies) in order to purchase a historic Lincoln document. But when all those pennies were counted, the total was over $18,000 (one-point-eight million pennies).

The extra money will go toward preservation and display of the document through the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum located in the Capital City.