ABRAHAM LINCOLN AT TWENTY-SIX YEARS OF AGE.
When the death of Ann Rutledge came upon Lincoln, for a time threatening
to destroy his ambition and blast his life, he was in a most encouraging
position. Master of a profession in which he had an abundance of work
and earned fair wages; hopeful of being admitted in a few months to the
bar; a member of the State Assembly, with every reason to believe that,
if he desired it, his constituency would return him—few men are as far
advanced at twenty-six as was Abraham Lincoln.
[Illustration:
CONCORD CEMETERY.—WHERE ANN RUTLEDGE WAS BURIED.
From a photograph by C. S. McCullough, Petersburg, Illinois. Concord
cemetery lies seven miles northwest of the old town of New Salem, in
a secluded place, surrounded by woods and pastures, away from the
world. In this lonely spot Ann Rutledge was at first laid to rest.
Thither Lincoln is said often to have gone alone, and “sat in
silence for hours at a time;” and it was to Ann Rutledge’s grave
here that he pointed and said: “There my heart lies buried.” The old
cemetery suffered the melancholy fate of New Salem. It became a
neglected, deserted spot. The graves were lost in weeds, and a heavy
growth of trees kept out the sun and filled the place with gloom. A
dozen years ago this picture was taken. It was a blustery day in the
autumn, and the weeds and trees were swaying before a furious gale.
No other picture of the place, taken while Ann Rutledge was buried
there, is known to be in existence. A picture of a cemetery, with
the name of Ann Rutledge on a high, flat tombstone, has been
published in two or three books; but it is not genuine, the “stone”
being nothing more than a board improvised for the occasion. The
grave of Ann Rutledge was never honored with a stone until the body
was taken up in 1890 and removed to Oakland cemetery, a mile
southwest of Petersburg.
]
Intellectually he was far better equipped than he believed himself to
be, better than he has ordinarily been credited with being. True, he had
had no conventional college training, but he had by his own efforts
attained the chief result of all preparatory study, the ability to take
hold of a subject and assimilate it. The fact that in six weeks he had
acquired enough of the science of surveying to enable him to serve as
deputy surveyor shows how well trained his mind was. The power to grasp
a large subject quickly and fully is never an accident. The nights
Lincoln spent in Gentryville, lying on the floor in front of the fire,
figuring on the fire-shovel; the hours he passed in poring over the
Statutes of Indiana; the days he wrestled with Kirkham’s Grammar, alone
made the mastery of Flint and Gibson possible. His struggle with Flint
and Gibson made easier the volumes he borrowed from Major Stuart’s law
library.
[Illustration:
JOSEPH DUNCAN, GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS DURING LINCOLN’S FIRST TERM IN THE
LEGISLATURE.
Joseph Duncan, Governor of Illinois from 1834 to 1838, was born in
Kentucky in 1794. The son of an officer of the regular army, he at
nineteen became a soldier in the war of 1812, and did gallant
service. He removed to Illinois in 1818, and soon became prominent
in the State, serving as a major-general of militia, a State
Senator, and from 1826 to 1834 as a member of Congress, resigning
from Congress to take the office of Governor. He was at first a
Democrat, but afterwards became a Whig. He was a man of the highest
character and public spirit. He died in 1844.
]
Lincoln had a mental trait which explains his rapid growth in mastering
subjects—seeing clearly was essential to him. He was unable to put a
question aside until he understood it. It pursued him, irritated him,
until solved. Even in his Gentryville days his comrades noted that he
was constantly searching for reasons and that he “explained so clearly.”
This characteristic became stronger with years. He was unwilling to
pronounce himself on any subject until he understood it, and he could
not let it alone until he had reached a conclusion which satisfied him.
This seeing clearly became a splendid force in Lincoln; because when he
once had reached a conclusion he had the honesty of soul to suit his
actions to it. No consideration could induce him to abandon the course
his reason told him was logical. Not that he was obstinate, and having
taken a position, would not change it if he saw on further study that he
was wrong. In his first circular to the people of Sangamon County is
this characteristic passage: “Upon the subjects I have treated, I have
spoken as I thought. I may be wrong in any or all of them; but, holding
it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at
all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be
erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.”
[Illustration:
DR. FRANCIS REGNIER.
From a painting owned by his daughter, Mrs. N. W. Branson, Petersburg,
Illinois. Dr. Regnier was one of the New Salem physicians. He lived
in the place until most of its inhabitants had deserted it, and then
removed to Petersburg. He was for many years a leading citizen in
the community. He died in 1858.
]
Joined to these strong mental and moral qualities was that power of
immediate action which so often explains why one man succeeds in life
while another of equal intelligence and uprightness fails. As soon as
Lincoln saw a thing to do he did it. He wants to know; here is a book—it
may be a biography, a volume of dry statutes, a collection of verse; no
matter, he reads and ponders it until he has absorbed all it has for
him. He is eager to see the world; a man offers him a position as a
“hand” on a Mississippi flatboat; he takes it without a moment’s
hesitation over the toil and exposure it demands. John Calhoun is
willing to make him a deputy surveyor; he knows nothing of the science;
in six weeks he has learned enough to begin his labors. Sangamon County
must have representatives; why not he? And his circular goes out.
Ambition alone will not explain this power of instantaneous action. It
comes largely from that active imagination which, when a new relation or
position opens, seizes on all its possibilities and from them creates a
situation so real that one enters with confidence upon what seems to the
unimaginative the rashest undertaking. Lincoln saw the possibilities in
things, and immediately appropriated them.
But the position he filled in Sangamon County in 1835 was not all due to
these qualities; much was due to his personal charm. By all accounts he
was big, awkward, ill-clad, shy; yet his sterling honor, his unselfish
nature, his heart of the true gentleman, inspired respect and
confidence. Men might laugh at his first appearance, but they were not
long in recognizing the real superiority of his nature.
[Illustration:
GRAVE OF ANN RUTLEDGE IN OAKLAND CEMETERY.
From a photograph made for this work by C. S. McCullough, Petersburg,
Illinois, in September, 1895. On the 15th of May, 1890, the remains
of Ann Rutledge were removed from the long-neglected grave in the
Concord graveyard to a new and picturesque burying-ground a mile
southwest of Petersburg, called Oakland cemetery. The old grave,
though marked by no stone, was easily identified from the fact that
Ann was buried by the side of her younger brother, David, who died
in 1842, upon the threshold of what promised to be a brilliant
career as a lawyer. The removal was made by Samuel Montgomery, a
prominent business man of Petersburg. He was accompanied to the
grave by James McGrady Rutledge and a few others, who located the
grave beyond a doubt. In the new cemetery, the grave occupies a
place somewhat apart from others. A young maple tree is growing
beside it, and it is marked by an unpolished granite stone bearing
the simple inscription, “Ann Rutledge.”
]
Such was Abraham Lincoln at twenty-six, when the tragic death of Ann
Rutledge made all that he had attained, all that he had planned, seem
fruitless and empty. He was too sincere and just, too brave a man, to
allow a great sorrow permanently to interfere with his activities. He
rallied his forces and returned to his law, his surveying, his politics.
He brought to his work a new power, that insight and patience which only
a great sorrow can give.
APPENDIX.
I.
MEMORANDA FOR LINCOLN’S GENEALOGY.
_Prepared especially for this volume by the Hon. L. E. Chittenden,
Register of the Treasury under Lincoln, and author of “President
Lincoln,” etc._
The Hon. SOLOMON LINCOLN of Hingham, Massachusetts, in an article on the
“Lincoln Families of Massachusetts,” in the “New England Historical and
Genealogical Register,” 1865, Volume XIX., page 357, says: “We now come
to the family of Samuel Lincoln, in which we find more names than in any
other, which leads to the belief that it is in this direction that we
must look for the ancestor of Abraham Lincoln. To this family belong the
honored names of Levi Lincoln, Attorney-General of the United States,
Lieutenant and acting Governor of Massachusetts after the death of
Governor Sullivan; also his two distinguished sons, Levi, 1802, who,
besides other offices, was by nine elections the popular Governor of
Massachusetts; and Enoch Lincoln, Governor of Maine; and many other able
men.
“In a correspondence with the late President, in 1848, when he was in
Congress, he stated: ‘My father’s name is Thomas, my grandfather’s was
Abraham, the same as my own. He went from Rockingham County, Virginia,
to Kentucky, about the year 1782, and two years afterwards was killed by
the Indians. We have a vague tradition that my great-grandfather was a
Quaker who went from Pennsylvania to Virginia. Further than this I have
not heard anything. It may do no harm to say that Abraham and Mordecai
are common names in our family.’
“In a subsequent letter in 1848, he wrote: ‘I have mentioned that my
grandfather’s name was Abraham; he had, as I think I have heard, four
brothers, Isaac, Jacob, Thomas, and John. He had three sons, Mordecai,
Josiah, and Thomas—the last my father. My uncle Mordecai had three sons,
Abraham, James, and Mordecai. My uncle Josiah had several daughters and
only one son, Thomas. This is all I know certainly on the subject of
names. It is, however, my father’s understanding that Abraham, Mordecai,
and Thomas are old family names of ours.’”
Mr. Solomon Lincoln continues: “We have already mentioned among the sons
of the first Samuel—Daniel, Mordecai, and Thomas; and among his
grandsons—Mordecai, Isaac, and Abraham.
“It has been stated ... that about the middle of the last century the
great-grandfather of Abraham Lincoln removed from Berks County,
Pennsylvania, to Augusta County, Virginia. These facts, from ‘Rupp’s
History of Berks County,’ are furnished by William B. Trask, Esq., of
the Genealogical Society.”
From the “History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts,” four
volumes, 8vo, 1893, by a committee comprising Ex-Governor Long and
two members of the Lincoln family. See Volume I., page 271.
“The Lincolns fill the pages of local and Commonwealth history with the
story of their services in the field, the town, the halls of
legislation, and the council chamber, from the earliest day to the
present time. During the French wars we have seen Benjamin Lincoln, as
colonel of his regiment, the historical Third Suffolk, ... taking an
active part. Colonel Lincoln died in March, 1771, leaving, among others,
the son Benjamin who so worthily filled the place he long occupied in
public estimation and usefulness. The affection that is felt for the
great President _Abraham Lincoln, also a descendant from the Hingham
family_, has given a national fame to the name in later years.”
From “The Lineage of Abraham Lincoln traced from Samuel Lincoln.” By
Samuel Shackford, Esq., of Chicago, a descendant of Samuel Lincoln.
See New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 1887, Volume
XLI., page 153.
“Samuel Lincoln came from Norfolk County, England—probably from the town
of Hingham—in 1637, at the age of eighteen years, ... first to Salem, as
an apprentice to a weaver; then to Hingham, where his brother Thomas ...
lived.... He had ten children.... Through his first son, Samuel, came
the Governors Levi Lincoln, father and son, and Enoch Lincoln, Governor
of Maine. Mordecai, fourth son of Samuel, born at Hingham, June 17,
1767, was a blacksmith; worked at his trade in Hull; married Sarah,
daughter of Abraham and Sarah (Whitman) Jones. From Hull the family
removed to the neighboring town of Scituate, about 1704, where Mordecai
established a furnace for smelting iron ore. The children of Mordecai
and Sarah (Jones) Lincoln were five in number: Mordecai, born April 1,
1686; Abraham, born January 13, 1689; Isaac, born October 21, 1691; and
Sarah, born July 29, 1691—all in Hingham. By a second wife he had
Elizabeth and Jacob, born in Scituate.
“The will of Mordecai, dated Scituate, March 3, 1727, is of an unusual
character. Isaac and Jacob, the younger sons—Jacob a lad of sixteen
years—were named executors; and to them are bequeathed all the
testator’s lands in Hingham and Scituate, with the saw and grist mill,
and all his interest in the iron works. To ‘son Mordecai’ is left one
hundred and ten pounds in money or bills of credit; to ‘son Abraham,’
sixty pounds in money or bills, ‘besides what he has already had.’ To
the oldest sons of Mordecai and Abraham, each ten pounds when they come
of age; and provision is made for sending three grandsons to college, if
they wish a liberal education.
“Shortly before this time the names of Mordecai and Abraham disappear
from, and are not after 1727 found on, the records of Massachusetts.
They were active men of property; and this fact, in connection with the
will, which gave them only money, and all the immovable property to
Isaac and Jacob, raises an almost irresistible inference that Mordecai
and Abraham no longer lived in Massachusetts.
“We now turn to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and find that, in the early
part of the last century, the Moores, Hales, Rolfs, Pikes, and other
families from eastern Massachusetts, came to Middlesex County, New
Jersey, and founded a town which they named, in honor of their old
pastor in Newbury, Massachusetts, Woodbridge. At a somewhat later date
the names of Mordecai and Abraham Lincoln appear on the records of
Monmouth, which adjoins Middlesex County.
“Mordecai Lincoln had married Hannah (Bowne) Salter of Freehold,
Monmouth County, New Jersey. Her uncle John Bowne’s will, dated
September 14, 1714, gives to Hannah Lincoln a bequest of two hundred and
fifty pounds. She was the daughter of Richard Salter, a leading lawyer,
member of the assembly, and judge. Captain John Bowne was also a leading
and influential citizen. The settlement of his estate involved several
lawsuits shown by the court records. The first in 1716, by Obadiah
Bowne, executor, against the other heirs, Mordecai Lincoln being a
defendant. In this a non-suit was entered, and the second suit ended in
the same way. The third, in 1719, also included Mordecai Lincoln as a
defendant, but the sheriff returns him _non est_, and in 1720 the suit
as to Mordecai was withdrawn.
“These facts are satisfactory proof that Mordecai Lincoln had, before
1720, left Monmouth County.”
As further proof of the identity of the New Jersey with the Hingham
Mordecai, there is a letter shown to Mr. Shackford by John C. Beekman,
Esq., of Monmouth, written by John Bowne, one of the heirs to his uncle
Obadiah, in which he calls Mordecai “brother.”
A deed on file in the office of the Secretary of State in Trenton, New
Jersey, dated February 29, 1720, from Richard Salter to Mordecai
Lincoln, both of Freehold, conveys four hundred acres of land, situate
on the Machaponix River and Grand Bank, Middlesex County. A like deed,
of May 25, 1726, conveys one hundred acres of land in the same locality,
and describes Mordecai Lincoln, the grantee, as of Chester County,
Pennsylvania.
It appears from these records that Mordecai was in New Jersey in 1720.
In 1876 there was unearthed in the old burying-ground near Allentown,
New Jersey, a tombstone, bearing this inscription: “To the memory of
Deborah Lincoln, who died May 15, 1720, aged three years and four
months.” As no other Lincolns have been found in the vicinity, it is
probable that she was the child of Mordecai and Hannah Lincoln.
A deed on file in the Department of Internal Affairs of Pennsylvania,
dated December 24, 1725, from Mordecai Lincoln of Coventry, County of
Chester, Pennsylvania, conveys to William Branston, merchant, of
Philadelphia, one-third of one hundred and six acres of land, according
to an agreement between Samuel Nutt and Mordecai Lincoln, with “the
mynes, and minerals, _forges_, buildings, houses, and improvements.”
This is important, for it shows that Mordecai first resided in Chester
County, Pennsylvania, where he made iron, a trade learned at his
father’s establishment in Scituate.
It is through Mordecai that the pedigree of President Lincoln is traced
to Samuel Lincoln. But it is also essential that Abraham of Monmouth
County, New Jersey, should be identified as one of the missing sons of
Mordecai and Sarah (Jones) Lincoln of eastern Massachusetts.
Abraham, like his father, was a blacksmith, as the next deed shows. By
it, on the records of Monmouth County, New Jersey, February 20, 1727,
Abraham Lincoln, “blacksmith,” conveys to Thomas Williams two hundred
and forty acres of land near Creswick, in said county, and two hundred
acres conveyed to Abraham Lincoln by Abraham Van Horn. He was probably
preparing to follow his brother Mordecai to Pennsylvania.
The will of Abraham Lincoln is dated in Springfield, Chester County,
Pennsylvania, April 15, 1745, and was entered for probate on the 29th of
the same month. His estate, a plantation in Springfield and two houses
in Philadelphia, was divided among his children, viz.: Mordecai,
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, John, Sarah, and Rebecca. Four of his sons bore
the same Old Testament names as the four sons of the first Mordecai of
Scituate.
Returning to Mordecai, we find in his will, proved June 7, 1736, that he
is described as of Amity, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. By it he
bequeaths to “my sons Mordecai and Thomas all my lands in Amity,” etc.;
to his daughters Hannah and Mary a piece of land in Machaponix, New
Jersey; and to “my son John three hundred acres of land in the same
town;” and to his daughters Ann and Sarah one hundred acres, also lying
in Machaponix, New Jersey.
His oldest son, John, was by his first wife, Hannah Salter, and went
with his father to Pennsylvania. A deed from John, on file in the
Secretary of State’s office in Trenton, New Jersey, describes him as the
“son and heir of Mordecai Lincoln, of the town of Carnaervon, County of
Lancaster,” and the deed conveys to William Dye “three hundred acres in
Middlesex County, New Jersey, part of the property conveyed October 20,
1720, by Richard Salter to Mordecai Lincoln, and by him bequeathed to
his said son John.”
John Lincoln, in 1758, owned a farm in Union township, adjoining Exeter
(Pennsylvania?), which he sold, and went to Virginia, settling in that
portion of Augusta County which was organized into Rockingham County in
1779. His will cannot now be found, part of the papers in the probate
office at Harrisonburgh having been destroyed by fire. But there is
ample proof that he had sons—John, Thomas, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and
daughters.
The son Abraham married Mary Shepley in North Carolina, just over the
Virginia boundary line, where their sons Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas
were born. In 1782, or about that time, the family removed to Kentucky,
where their daughters Mary and Nancy were born. The son THOMAS LINCOLN
married Nancy Hanks, September 23, 1806, near Springfield, Kentucky, and
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, their son, was born on the twelfth day of February,
1809.
Mr. Shackford continues: “The Lincolns through which the President’s
genealogy is traced were for six generations, with a single exception,
pioneers in the settlement of new countries. I. Samuel, an early settler
at Hingham, Massachusetts. II. Mordecai, of Scituate, who lived and died
near where he was born. III. Mordecai, settled in Pennsylvania, thirty
years before Berks County was organized. IV. John, went to the wilds of
Virginia. V. Abraham, went to Kentucky with Boone when it was infested
by savages. VI. Thomas, with his son Abraham, pioneers to Indiana.”
Mr. Shackford has traced the pedigrees of other members of the Lincoln
family, in which the persistence of Scripture names is very marked. We
content ourselves with the following, which bears directly on the
connection of the Pennsylvania and Virginia families:
“Abraham, the posthumous son of Mordecai and Mary Lincoln of Amity, born
in 1736, married Ann Boone, a cousin of Daniel, the Kentucky pioneer.
Their grandson, David J. Lincoln of Birdsboro’, Pennsylvania, informs me
that his father James, who died in 1860, at the age of ninety-four, and
his uncle Thomas, who died in 1864, told him that Daniel Boone often
visited his friends in Pennsylvania, and always spent part of his time
with his cousin Ann, and that his glowing accounts of the South and West
induced John Lincoln to remove to Virginia. After his removal he was
known as ‘Virginia John,’ to distinguish him from others of the same
name.”
A fact which will probably impress the reader is that among the numerous
Lincolns mentioned in the six generations from Samuel, the immigrant in
1637, to Abraham, the President, two centuries later, there is not one
that does not bear a scriptural name. A coincidence not less remarkable
is the identity of names in the successive families.
Among the children of the first Mordecai, 1686, were Mordecai, Abraham,
Isaac, Sarah.
Of the second Mordecai, 1727: Mordecai, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.
Of Abraham, brother of second Mordecai, 1745: Mordecai, Abraham, Isaac,
Sarah—identical with the children of the first Mordecai; also John,
Jacob, and Rebecca.
Of John of Virginia, or “Virginia John,” 1758: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Thomas, John.
If there are any doubting Thomases who cannot see in this extraordinary
identity of names any blood relationship, no evidence would convince
them; neither would they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.
Aside from this identity of names, the foregoing facts, taken from
original documents on file, and family papers, prove beyond any
reasonable doubt that Samuel Lincoln of Hingham was the ancestor of
Abraham Lincoln of Illinois by a line of descent through the first and
second Mordecai, “Virginia John,” Abraham, and Thomas Lincoln. In
genealogical studies it is seldom, indeed, that a pedigree is so clearly
established.
II.
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS GRAHAM AND HIS REMINISCENCES OF LINCOLN’S PARENTS.
The most important testimony we have in regard to the character of the
parents of Abraham Lincoln, and of the conditions under which they
lived, is that of Christopher Columbus Graham. Dr. Graham was born at
Worthington’s Station, near Danville, Kentucky, in 1784. He lived in the
State until his death at Louisville in 1885. This long period was to the
very end one of useful activity. A physician by profession, Dr. Graham
was, by his love of nature, botanist, geologist, naturalist; and his
observations on the flora, fauna, and strata of Kentucky are quoted on
both sides of the Atlantic by scientists. For many years Dr. Graham was
the owner of the famous Harrodsburg Springs. About 1852 he sold this
property to the War Department of the United States as a Retreat for
Invalid Military Officers. After the sale of the Springs he spent most
of this time in study and in arranging his fine cabinet of Kentucky
geology and natural history, before selling it to the Louisville Library
Association.
It was only by an accident that Dr. Graham’s knowledge of the history of
Thomas Lincoln was given to the public. Recluse and student, he heard
little or nothing of the stories about the worthlessness of Thomas
Lincoln and his wife which were circulated at the time of the election
of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency. To what he did hear he paid little
or no attention. One day in the spring of 1882, however, he was visiting
at the home of Capt. J. W. Wartmann, Clerk of the United States Court at
Evansville, Indiana, and Mr. Wartmann overheard him say that he was
present at the marriage of Thomas Lincoln. Realizing at once the
historical importance of such a testimony, and thinking that it might
lead to the discovery of documentary proofs of the marriage, Mr.
Wartmann secured from Mr. Graham the following affidavit:
“I, Christopher C. Graham, now of Louisville, Kentucky, aged
ninety-eight years, on my oath say: That I was present at the
marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, in Washington County,
near the town of Springfield, Kentucky; that one Jesse Head, a
Methodist preacher of Springfield, Kentucky, performed the ceremony.
I knew the said Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks well, and know the
said Nancy Hanks to have been virtuous and respectable, and of good
parentage. I do not remember the exact date of the marriage, but was
present at the marriage aforesaid; and I make this affidavit freely,
and at the request of J. W. Wartmann, to whom, for the first time, I
have this day incidentally stated the fact of my presence at the
said wedding of President Lincoln’s father and mother. I make this
affidavit to vindicate the character of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy
Hanks, and to put to rest forever the legitimacy of Abraham
Lincoln’s birth. I was formerly proprietor of Harrodsburgh Springs;
I am a retired physician, and am now a resident of Louisville,
Kentucky. I think Felix Grundy was also present at the marriage of
said Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, the father and mother of
Abraham Lincoln. The said Jesse Head, the officiating minister at
the marriage aforesaid, afterward removed to Harrodsburgh, Kentucky,
and edited a paper there, and died at that place.
“CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS GRAHAM.
“Subscribed and sworn to before me, this March 20, A.D. 1882. N. C.
Butler, Clerk United States Circuit Court, First District, Indiana.
By J. W. Wartmann, Deputy Clerk.”
This affidavit attracted wide attention, and the “New York Christian
Advocate,” the leading organ of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in its
issue of April 13, 1882, raised several pertinent questions:
1. Was Christopher Columbus Graham, at ninety-eight years of age, in
full possession of his faculties?
2. Why had he not given his precious information before to the public?
3. Was there a Methodist preacher named Jesse Head?
These questions called out a large number of answers. The Rev. William
M. Grubbs, of the Southwest Indiana Conference, stationed at Castleton,
Marion County, in answer to the editor’s first point gave a brief
history of Dr. Graham, and explained why he “should never have been
heard of before as the possessor of this precious information”:
“The Doctor himself was a man of more than ordinary intelligence,
almost a Chesterfield in manners, and a leader for years of the Whig
party—a great friend of Henry Clay—and unless he has greatly
degenerated, he is now, at ninety-eight years, a good specimen of
‘the fine old Kentucky gentleman.’ Additional to the fact that he
has been quite deaf for many years, he is a great lover of nature in
its varied forms. As an evidence of this, at the time I was their
guest, in 1855, he had been absent six months in the mountains of
Kentucky, pursuing his favorite studies in natural history, geology,
etc. Thus, though on good terms with his family, his habits became
those of the student and the recluse. The family told us pleasantly
that such was his passion for nature in its wildest forms that they
did not know when he would think of paying them a visit. The last
time I saw him was in Louisville, Kentucky, arranging his large
cabinet of natural history, geology, etc., for the Library
Association of that city, to which he had sold the same for quite a
large sum. Since the death of his wife and the marriage of his
daughters, I think he has had no settled home—something of a
rover—with ample means and friends everywhere. It is not, therefore,
surprising that his habits of indifference to passing events and
themes kept him ignorant of the mooted point that he sets to rest by
his late statement.”
The Rev. John R. Eads, pastor of the Danville, Kentucky, Methodist
Episcopal Church, wrote of Dr. Graham: “I have never heard his veracity
or his integrity questioned.” Of Jesse Head he said: “He is remembered
by some of the old people of this community.” He added:
“You seem surprised that the testimony of Dr. Graham to the
‘precious information’ which he communicates should not have been
procured earlier. I frankly confess that, while I am a native of
central Kentucky, and have spent most of my life here, I never heard
before, so far as I can now remember, a question raised as to the
legal marriage of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Thinking this
might be exceptional in my case, I have taken the pains to-day to
ask others if they ever heard such a question raised, and they tell
me they have not. I feel quite sure that there must be very few
people in central Kentucky who ever heard of a doubt expressed
concerning the legal marriage of Thomas Lincoln.”
Letters were received from the Rev. R. T. Stephenson of Shelbyville,
Kentucky, and others, supplying information as to who the Rev. Jesse
Head was and what were his relations to the Methodist Episcopal Church.
The facts, however, are all given in condensed shape in the following:
“LAWRENCEBURG, KENTUCKY,
“ANDERSON COUNTY, _May 3, 1882_.
“TO THE REV. J. M. BUCKLEY, D.D.
“_Dear Sir and Brother_:—Your favor reached me on the eve of my
leaving Harrodsburg for this place, hence the delay in responding to
your request. The Rev. Jesse Head referred to was my grandfather. He
was born in Maryland, near Baltimore; was married to Miss Jane
Ramsey, of (what is now) Bedford County, Pennsylvania. He removed to
Kentucky, and settled at Springfield, Washington County. He was an
ordained minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but was never
connected with the itinerancy in Kentucky, on account of feeble
health. He held several prominent civil offices while living in
Springfield, and was actively engaged preaching the gospel of God’s
grace. He celebrated the rites of matrimony between Thomas Lincoln
and Miss Nancy Hanks, father and mother of President Lincoln, in
1806, near Springfield. He afterwards moved to Harrodsburg, Mercer
County, where he lived until his death, which occurred in March,
1842. At Harrodsburg he engaged in merchandising, also owned and
edited the county paper for a term of years. He was largely
instrumental, if not wholly, in building the first church ever
erected in Harrodsburg; also organized and conducted the first
prayer-meeting. In gospel labors he was always abundant. His house
was the home for several years of Rev. H. B. Bascom, afterwards
Bishop; also of Bishop McKendree especially, as they were bosom
friends. Some time before his death he left the Methodist Episcopal
Church, and connected himself with the Radical Methodists, on
account of _slavery_, and also some dissatisfaction with the
Episcopacy. He then had charge of and preached for a church for
years at Lexington, Kentucky. His name at Harrodsburg and through
the surrounding country is as ointment poured forth. He was a man of
decided and positive character, bold and aggressive, and died loved
and honored by all. He died as he lived, in the triumph of the faith
of the Gospel of God’s Son.
“Fraternally yours,
“E. B. HEAD, P.E.,
“Lawrenceburg Circuit, Kentucky Conference.”
The “Christian Advocate,” upon receipt of the first letter, requested
the Rev. John R. Eads of Danville, Kentucky, to have the marriage record
examined, the following reply being returned:
“DANVILLE, KENTUCKY, _April 25, 1882_.
“DR. BUCKLEY.
“_My Dear Brother_:—Your postal card received. I have just received
the accompanying paper, which, though somewhat singular in form in
some of its parts, will be plain to you in its essential facts. You
have received my other two letters, which in connection with this
certificate will, I trust, set the whole matter to which they relate
in a satisfactory light.
“Fraternally,
“JOHN R. EADS.”
Here follows the certificate:
“Clerk’s Office, Washington County Court,
“W. F. Booker, Clerk.
“SPRINGFIELD, KENTUCKY, _April 24, 1882_.
“THE REV. JOHN R. EADS.
“_Dear Sir_:—Yours in regard to the marriage certificate of Thomas
Lincoln to Nancy Hanks reached here during my absence in Louisville.
I now send you a copy of the same:
“I do hereby certify that the following is a true list of the
marriage solemnized by me between Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks,
September 23, 1806.
“JESSE HEAD, D. N. E. C.
“(Copy attest.)
“W. F. Booker,
“Clerk, Washington County Court.
“Yours respectfully, W. F. B.”
The “Christian Advocate,” in publishing the letters, said:
“In summing up the whole the following points may be considered as
forever settled:
“1. There was such a man as Jesse Head, a local deacon in the
Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1806.
“2. He married Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks on September 23,
1806,[20] of whom was born the venerated and never-to-be-forgotten
Abraham Lincoln.
Footnote 20:
The date here given is wrong; the marriage took place on June 12,
1806. The error arose in copying the record the first time, the
date of the marriage following that of Thomas Lincoln being taken
instead of the one before his name.
“3. The fact of the marriage was duly certified by Jesse Head, in
the clerk’s office of Washington County, Kentucky, where it may now
be seen.
“4. The Rev. E. B. Head has spoken of this fact in the family
history prior to the publication of this affidavit.
“5. Dr. Graham is a competent witness, and his testimony is
confirmed in every point.
“6. In view of these facts, that there should ever have been any
doubts raised about the marriage of the parents of Mr. Lincoln, and
that it should have been gravely discussed, and never explicitly
settled in the various biographies, is remarkable.”
Soon after the publication of the above facts a historian of Louisville,
Kentucky, Dr. Henry Whitney Cleveland, realizing the importance of Dr.
Graham’s reminiscences, secured from him, in his hundredth year, an
account of what he remembered of Thomas Lincoln. Mr. Cleveland took down
word for word what Dr. Graham told him, and we print it in full below.
We regard it as in many ways the most important unpublished document we
have been able to discover in regard to Thomas Lincoln. As to the mental
condition of Dr. Graham in 1884, we have the testimony of some of the
leading citizens of Louisville. In the paper read before the Southern
Historical Society in 1880, in commemoration of the one hundredth
anniversary of Louisville, Dr. Durrett said of Mr. Graham:
“Four years more will make him a centenarian, and yet he moves along the
streets every day with the elastic step of manhood’s prime, and the
eagle eye which made him in youth the finest rifle-shot in the world is
shorn but little of its unerring sight. He was a practising physician
three-quarters of a century ago, and is the author of several learned
books of a professional and philosophical character. His health is yet
good, his faculties well preserved, and he seems to-day more like a man
of sixty-nine than ninety-six.”
In 1884, when Dr. Graham had become a centenarian, a banquet was given
him at which all the leading citizens of Louisville were present.
Without exception, every one of the persons with whom we have talked of
Dr. Graham’s condition at this time affirms that he was mentally
vigorous and his memory trustworthy. In the face of such testimony the
statements in the following document must be accepted:
DR. GRAHAM’S STATEMENT.
_The original statement was written out, at Dr. Graham’s dictation, by
Dr. Henry Whitney Cleveland of Louisville, Kentucky, but was signed by
Dr. Graham’s own hand._
I, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS GRAHAM, now in my hundredth year, and visiting
the Southern Exposition in Louisville, where I live, tell this to please
my young friend Henry Cleveland, who is nearly half my age. He was often
at the Springs Hotel in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, then owned and kept by me
for invalids and pleasure-seekers. I am one of the two living men who
can prove that Abraham Lincoln, or Linkhorn, as the family was
miscalled, was born in lawful wedlock, for I saw Thomas Lincoln marry
Nancy Hanks on the twelfth day of June, 1806. He was born at what was
then known as the Rock Spring Farm—it is now called the Creal
Place—three miles south of Hodgensville, in Larue County, Kentucky.
Kentucky was first a county of Virginia after its settlement, and then
was divided into three counties; and these, again divided, are pretty
much the present State. The first historian was Filson, who made and
published the first map of the separate territory, with the names of
streams and stations as given by Daniel Boone and Squire Boone, James
Harrod, and others. I knew all of these, as well as President Lincoln’s
parents.
I think they lived on the farm four years after he was born. Another boy
was born in Hodgensville, or, I should say, buried there. The sister,
Sally, was older than Abe, I think. I think the paper now owned by Henry
Cleveland is the “marriage lines” written by Rev. Jesse Head, a
well-known Methodist preacher. I do not think the old Bible it was found
in was that of Tom Lincoln. It would cost too much for him. All of the
records in it were those of the father’s family—the John M. Hewetts—of
the wife of Dr. Theodore S. Bell. Dr. Bell was only about twenty years
younger than I am, and probably got the certificate in 1858 or 1860,
when assertions were made that Tom Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were not
married when Abe was born.
He was reputed to have been born February 12, 1809, and I see no good
reason to dispute it. Sally, I am sure, was the first child, and Nancy
was a fresh and good-looking girl—I should say past twenty. Nancy lived
with the Sparrow family a good bit. It was likely Tom had the family
Bible from Virginia, through his father, called Abraham Linkhorn. His
brothers, however, were older—if they were brothers, and not uncles, as
some say. I was hunting roots for my medicines, and just went to the
wedding to get a good supper, and got it.
Bibles cost as much as the spinning-wheel, or loom, or rifle, and were
imported in the main. A favorite with the Methodists was Fletcher’s, or
one he wrote a preface for. Preachers used it, and had no commentaries.
A book dedicated to King James or any other king did not take well in
Revolutionary times. The Bibles I used to see had no printed records or
blanks, but a lot of fine linen hand-made paper would be bound in front
or back. On this, family history and land matters were written out fully
like a book. Some had fifty pages. The court-houses even were made of
logs, and the meeting-houses too, if they had any. No registers were
kept as in English parish churches, and are not yet. Before a license
could be had, a bond and security was taken of the bridegroom, and the
preacher had to return to the court all marriages of the year. This was
often a long list, and at times papers were lost or forgotten, but not
often. The “marriage lines” given by the preacher to the parties were
very important in case the records were burned up by accident. Such is
the paper that Henry Cleveland has shown to me. The ring was not often
used, as so few had one to use. The Methodist Church discipline forbid
“the putting on of gold or costly apparel,” and I think a preacher with
a gold watch—if not an inherited one—would have been dismissed. A
preacher that married was “located,” and that ended his itinerancy in
the Methodist Church. The Presbyterians were educated and married;
Baptists not educated.
Tom Lincoln was a carpenter, and a good one for those days, when a cabin
was built mainly with the axe, and not a nail or bolt or hinge in it,
only leathers and pins to the door, and no glass, except in watches and
spectacles and bottles. Tom had the best set of tools in what was then
and now Washington County. Larue County, where the farm was settled, was
then Hardin.
Jesse Head, the good Methodist preacher that married them, was also a
carpenter or cabinet-maker by trade, and as he was then a neighbor, they
were good friends. He had a quarrel with the bishops, and was not an
itinerant for several years, but an editor, and county judge afterwards,
in Harrodsburg. Mr. Henry Cleveland has his commission from Governor
Isaac Shelby.
Many great men of the South and North were then opposed to slavery,
mainly because the new negroes were as wild as the Indians, and might
prove as dangerous. Few of the whites could read, and yet Pope and
Dryden and Shakespeare were as well known as Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s
Progress” and Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest.” Some were educated in Virginia
and North Carolina before they came, and these, when they became
teachers, wrote out their school-books entirely by hand.
Thomas Lincoln, like his son after him, had a notion that fortunes could
be made by trips to New Orleans by flatboat. This was dangerous, from
snags and whirlpools in the rivers, from Indians, and even worse—pirates
of the French, Canadians, and half-breeds. Steam was unknown, and the
flats had to be sold in New Orleans, as they could not be rowed back
against the currents. The neighbors joked Tom for building his boat too
high and narrow, from an idea he had about speed, that has since been
adopted by ocean steamships. But he lacked in ballast. He loaded her up
with deer and bear hams and buffalo, which last was then not so plenty
for meat or hides as when the Boone brothers came in. Besides, he had
wax, for bees seemed to follow the white people, and he had wolf and
coon and mink and beaver skins, gentian root (that folks then called
“gensang” or “‘sang”), nuts, honey, peach-brandy and whiskey, and jeans
woven by his wife and Sally Bush, that he married after Nancy died. Some
said she died of heart trouble, from slanders about her and old Abe
Enloe, called Inlow, while her Abe, named for the pioneer Abraham
Linkhorn, was still little. But I am ahead of my story, for Nancy had
just got married where I was telling it, and the flatboat and Sally Bush
Lincoln come in before he goes over to what people called “Indiany.” I
will finish that, and then go back.
He started down Knob Creek when it was flush with rains; but the leaves
held water like a sponge, and the ground was shaded with big trees and
papaw and sassafras thickets and “cain,” as Bible-read folks spelt the
cane, and streams didn’t dry up in summer like they do now. When he got
to the Ohio it was flush, too, and full of whirlpools and snags. He had
his tool-chest along, intending to stop and work in Indiana and take
down another boat. But he never got to the Mississippi with that, for it
upset, and he only saved his chest and part of his load because he was
near to the Indiana shore. He stored what he saved under bark, and came
home a-foot, and in debt to neighbors who had helped him. But people
never pressed a man that lost by Indians or water.
Now I go back for a spell. Thomas and Nancy both could read and write,
and little Abe went to school about a year. He was eight years old at
the time of the accident to Tom Lincoln’s down-the-river venture. Thomas
and Nancy were good common people, not above nor below their neighbors,
and I did not take much notice of them, because there was no likelihood
that their wedding would mean more than other people’s did.
The preacher Jesse Head often talked to me on religion and politics, for
I always liked the Methodists. I have thought it might have been as much
from his free-spoken opinions as from Henry Clay’s American-African
colonization scheme in 1817, that I lost a likely negro man, who was
leader of my musicians. It is said that Tom Corwin met him in Ohio on
his way to Canada, and asked if I was along. The boy said no, he was
going for his freedom. Governor Corwin said he was a fool; he had never
been whipped or abused, but dressed like a white man, with the best to
eat, and that hundreds of white people would be glad of such a good
place, with no care, but cared for.
The boy drew himself up and said: “Marse Tom, that situation with all
its advantages is open to you, if you want ter go an’ fill it.”
But Judge Head never encouraged any runaway, nor had any “underground
railroad.” He only talked freely and boldly, and had plenty of true
Southern men with him, such as Clay. The Eli Whitney cotton-gin had now
made slavery so valuable that preachers looked in Hebrew and Greek
Testaments for scripture for it.
Tom Lincoln and Nancy, and Sally Bush were just steeped full of Jesse
Head’s notions about the wrong of slavery and the rights of man as
explained by Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Abe Lincoln the
Liberator was made in his mother’s womb and father’s brain and in the
prayers of Sally Bush; by the talks and sermons of Jesse Head, the
Methodist circuit rider, assistant county judge, printer-editor, and
cabinet-maker. Little Abe grew up to serve as a cabinet-maker himself
two Presidential terms.
It was in my trip to Canada after my negro that I met the younger
brother of the great chief Tecumseh. A mob wanted to kill me because I
was after my property that had legs and a level head. The Indian was one
of the finest looking men I ever saw, and in the full uniform of a
British officer. He protected me, and we had a talk after the danger was
over. He said that history was right about the death of his great
brother Tecumseh at the battle of the Thames in 1813. But the story of
his skin being taken off by soldiers to make razor-straps was all a lie,
as they never had the chance. He was not even slain at the point in the
battle indicated by Colonel Richard M. Johnson, whose accession to the
Vice-Presidency in 1836 was largely due to the credit which he gained
for this supposed exploit. My Indian protector said he was a lad at the
time, but [was] there; and that the red men never abandoned their
chiefs, dead nor alive.
I come back again to the Lincoln-Hanks wedding of 1806. Rev. or Judge
Jesse Head was one of the most prominent men there, as he was able to
own slaves, but did not on principle. Next, I reckon, came Mordecai
Lincoln, at one time member of the Kentucky legislature. He was a good
Indian fighter; and although some say he was the elder brother of Tom
Lincoln, I understood he was his uncle, or father’s brother. The story
of his killing the Indian who killed old Abraham Linkhorn is all “my eye
and Betty Martin.”
My acceptance of this whole pedigree is on hearsay, and none of it from
the locality of Tom Lincoln’s home. There is a Virginia land warrant,
No. 3,334, of March 4, 1780, for four hundred acres of land, cost one
hundred and sixty pounds, located in Jefferson County, Kentucky, on Long
Run; and [there is a report of survey for the same tract (see pages 22
and 23)] signed by William Shanon, D. S. J. C., and William May, S. J.
C., witnessed by Ananiah Lincoln and Josiah Lincoln, C. C.
(chain-carriers), and Abraham Linkhorn, Marker, dated May 7, 1785, five
years later. “Mordecai Lincoln, Gentleman,” is the title given one who
died in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 1735, and his will is recorded in
the Register’s office in Philadelphia. New Jersey, Virginia, and
Tennessee also have the name correctly, in the last century. The fame of
General Benjamin Lincoln of the Revolution was on every tongue at that
time. In the field-book of Daniel Boone, owned by Lyman C. Draper, five
hundred acres of land was entered for Abraham Lincoln on treasury
warrant No. 5,994, December 11, 1782. The officers of the land-office of
Virginia could spell, and so could the surveyor and deputy surveyor
(Record “B,” p. 60 of Jefferson County in 1785). The two chain-carriers
spelled the name correctly. Why not also think that the third man
spelled his correctly? A very illiterate man could pronounce what he
could not spell, and Abraham Linkhorn, who had money and could write,
knew his own name. President Lincoln told James Speed: “I don’t know who
my grandfather was, and am more concerned to know what his grandson will
be.” I am not sure that we know, either, perfectly yet.[21]
Footnote 21:
The memoranda for Lincoln’s genealogy (page 223), and the introduction
to this work, as well as the first chapter, show that we do know now,
beyond a doubt, who and what Lincoln’s ancestors were.
While you pin me down to facts I will say that I saw Nancy Hanks Lincoln
at her wedding, a fresh-looking girl, I should say over twenty. Tom was
a respectable mechanic and could choose, and she was treated with
respect....
I was at the infare, too, given by John H. Parrott, her guardian, and
only girls with money had guardians appointed by the court. We had
bear-meat (that you can eat the grease of, and it not rise like other
fats); venison; wild turkey and ducks; eggs, wild and tame (so common
that you could buy them at two bits a bushel); maple sugar, swung on a
string, to bite off for coffee or whiskey; syrup in big gourds;
peach-and-honey; a sheep that the two families barbecued whole over
coals of wood burned in a pit, and covered with green boughs to keep the
juices in; and a race for the whiskey bottle. The sheep cost the most,
and corn was early raised in what is now Boyle County, at the Isaac
Shelby place. I don’t know who stamped in the first peach-seed, but they
grew before the apples. Our table was of the puncheons cut from solid
logs, and on the next day they were the floor of the new cabin.
It is all stuff about Tom Lincoln keeping his wife in an open shed in a
winter when the wild animals left the woods and stood in the corners
next the stick-and-clay chimneys, so as not to freeze to death; or, if
climbers, got on the roof. The Lincolns had a cow and calf, milk and
butter, a good feather bed, for I have slept in it (while they took the
buffalo robes on the floor, because I was a doctor). They had home-woven
“kiverlids,” big and little pots, a loom and wheel; and William
Hardesty, who was there too, can say with me that Tom Lincoln was a man
and took care of his wife.
I have been in bark camps with Daniel and Squire Boone and James Harrod.
We have had to wade in the “crick,” as Daniel spelt it, to get our scent
lost in the water, and the Indian dogs off our trail. When trailed and
there was no water handy, I have seen Daniel cut a big grapevine loose
at the bottom, with his tomahawk, from the ground. Then, with a run and
swing from the tree it hung to, swing and jump forty feet clear, to
break the scent on the ground. I have done it too, but not so far. He
could beat any man on the run and jump, but it took more than two
Indians or one bear to make him do it. If no dog barked in the silent
woods, we could run backward very fast, and make Mr. Indian think we had
gone the way we came. They went that way, and we the other for dear
scalps and hair. Squirrels barking or chattering at Indians, or dogs,
often told us of our danger. I wanted to have a pioneer exhibit at the
great Louisville Southern Expositions of 1883 and 1884. I wanted the
dense laurel and the papaw thickets planted in rich soil; the bear
climbing the bee-tree, and beaten by the swinging log hung by the hunter
in his way; the creeping Indian with his tomahawk, and the hunter with
the old flint-and-steel rifle, just as I had seen them. Then I wanted to
have women from the mountains and the counties that railroads and
turnpikes have not opened, and have them in real life, to spin and
weave, or bead and fringe the moccasin and hunting-shirt and leggings as
they did when I was a boy. This, by the side of the industries and arts
of the new era, and the wool and cotton machinery in its present
perfection, would indeed tell to the eyes of the changes seen by an old
man who has lived a hundred years. As they did not listen to me, I have
asked Henry Cleveland, who was a boy and played with my little children
at the Harrodsburg Springs in the forties, to write it as I talked to
him. I am very deaf, but can see and talk, and will now write my
autograph to what he has written and copied off, and will take up James
Harrod at another time.
[Illustration: Christopher Columbus Graham in my 100th year]
III.
A LEAF FROM LINCOLN’S EXERCISE-BOOK, USED IN 1824. HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.
(See page 78.)
_From the Collection of Mr. William H. Lambert of Philadelphia._
Mr. Lambert’s collection of Lincolniana has been made most
intelligently. Primarily it consists of the literature directly relating
to Lincoln, and includes a large number of books and pamphlets, the list
of biographies and eulogies being very full. It also comprises a large
number of engravings of Lincoln, and a number of autograph letters and
documents, chief among which are a leaf from Lincoln’s sum-book, 1824;
the precipe in his first lawsuit; letter to William H. Herndon, relative
to General Taylor and the Mexican War; letter to his step-brother, John
D. Johnston, refusing assent to the latter’s proposition to dispose of
the mother’s interest in property; printed copy of the Emancipation
Proclamation, signed by Lincoln, attested by Mr. Seward, and certified
by Mr. Nicolay, being one of the twenty copies made for the great
Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia, 1864; and a series of autograph letters
of William H. Herndon, written in 1866 and 1867, relative to his
lectures on Lincoln and the biography which he proposed writing. Among
the books are a copy of Paley’s works, from Lincoln’s private library;
“Angel on Limitations,” from his law library; and “Webster’s
Dictionary,” used by Lincoln at the White House.
The office table, bookcase, revolving chair, and wooden inkstand owned
and used by Lincoln in his law office at Springfield, with certificates
from Mr. Herndon and others as to the genuineness of these articles, are
in the collection. From the inkstand, Mr. Herndon states, the
“house-divided-against-itself” speech was written.
The Volk life-mask and casts of hands, the Clark-Mills life-mask, and an
original ambrotype of Lincoln, made in August, 1860, are also owned by
Mr. Lambert.
IV.
THE OLDROYD LINCOLN COLLECTION.
The oldest and probably the largest collection of Lincolniana which has
been made is known as the Oldroyd collection, and is at present in the
house in Washington, D. C., where Lincoln died, April 15, 1865. The
collection takes its name from its owner, Colonel O. H. Oldroyd. The
germ of the collection was a campaign badge which excited the
possessor’s desire to have others. In the days of 1860 in Ohio—Mr.
Oldroyd lived in Ohio—it was easy to get badges adorned with Mr.
Lincoln’s face, or with a section of the rail fence and the flatboat
which had been adopted by the people as his armorial bearings. The
campaign badges which young Oldroyd saved naturally drew other things to
them; pictures off tomato cans, tobacco pouches, soap and chewing-gum
wrappers, and what not; cuts from the newspapers, campaign pictures.
If Mr. Oldroyd had not been born with the collecting spirit all this
would probably have amounted to nothing. It would have been relegated to
the garret and one day have been burned. But he had that itching for
possession, and the more he had the more he wanted. He spent all he
could earn in buying new treasures, and he began a general exchange with
other collectors, until by the close of the war he probably had the
finest lot of Lincolniana in the United States.
It was the possession of this collection which induced Mr. Oldroyd to go
to Springfield, Ill. Here he hoped to add easily to what he had already
gathered, much concerning Lincoln’s early life, and to find a permanent
home for his whole collection. Few people appreciated the value of
Lincoln souvenirs in those days, and many curious pieces came into Mr.
Oldroyd’s hands for the asking. As the collection became larger and the
public began to show interest in it, Mr. Oldroyd determined to put it in
a place where he could exhibit it freely. The old Lincoln homestead,
bought by Mr. Lincoln in 1846, the house where he was living when
elected to the Presidency, was standing. It had been sadly neglected for
many years, and now was vacant. Mr. Oldroyd rented it, and put his
collection into the double parlors of the house. The place became soon
one of the “monuments” of Springfield, and visitors went out of their
way to see it. It became the headquarters for old soldiers and the
starting point for all kinds of patriotic gatherings. Mr. Robert
Lincoln, seeing the interest which the public took in his father’s old
home, and appreciating the efforts of Mr. Oldroyd to make a complete
collection, turned over the Lincoln homestead in 1887 to the State as a
perpetual memorial to Abraham Lincoln. The legislature of Illinois
formally accepted the gift, and installed Mr. Oldroyd as guardian of the
house, it being understood that his collection was to remain with him.
The undertaking proved a success, and matters went well until in 1893
the administration changed. For some reason which only those initiated
into the mysteries of party government can understand, it was deemed
unwise by the party rulers to allow Mr. Oldroyd, who happened to be of
the opposing faith, to remain in charge of the Lincoln Home; so he was
relieved of his functions as guardian, and a new incumbent selected. One
result of the change, which the new administration had probably not
counted on, was that, as the collection in the house belonged to Mr.
Oldroyd, and not to the State, when he went out that went out too. The
intelligent people of Springfield of both parties regretted exceedingly
this ludicrous application of party principles to so non-partisan a
subject as a collection of Lincoln relics; but nothing was done to save
the museum, and Mr. Oldroyd was obliged to leave the town where he had
struggled with pathetic patience for so many years to get a permanent
home for his Lincolniana.
After some casting about he finally determined to remove to Washington,
and he was encouraged to this step by several men of the city and
government—prominent among whom were Chief Justice Fuller, Dr. Hamlin, a
leading clergyman, General Schofield, and the Hon. G. G. Hubbard. These
gentlemen had founded a Lincoln Memorial Association; and, renting the
house on Tenth Street where Lincoln had died on April 15, 1865, they
installed Mr. Oldroyd in it. Their plan was to petition Congress to buy
the house and collection, and to appropriate enough for the guardian’s
salary. Considerable interest was awakened in the enterprise, and the
association, on the strength of this, felt justified in keeping the
house open for several months. The appropriation did not come, however,
and the gentlemen decided that the expenses could not be kept up
indefinitely, and that it would be necessary to close up the exhibit
until the heart of Congress could be converted.
The situation was a difficult one for Mr. Oldroyd. He had made the
change from Springfield to Washington at large expense to himself, and
now he could ill afford to carry on the enterprise alone. But with a
pluck and a devotion to his cause which has characterized all his
movements he decided to take the burden on himself, rent the house, keep
open the museum, and trust to the public to support it. To aid in the
undertaking, he compiled and published a small volume—“The Words of
Lincoln.” The profits from the sale of this book, together with the
small fee charged to enter the museum, are all that now support the
undertaking.
The collection whose history has been here sketched is full of curious
and interesting articles. Among the personal effects of Mr. Lincoln
which Mr. Oldroyd has collected, the most valuable is undoubtedly the
tall silk hat which was worn by Lincoln on the night of his
assassination. There are several specimens of the plain and homely
garments used by Mr. Lincoln in his early days in Illinois. Of household
furniture there are many examples. The most touching is, undoubtedly,
the simple, old-fashioned cradle in which Mrs. Lincoln, and, if
tradition is correct, Mr. Lincoln also, rocked “Tad” and Willie. A
wooden settee which stood for years on the veranda of the Springfield
house, is exhibited, as well as the cooking-stove which stood in the
Lincoln kitchen at the time when the family moved to Washington. Mr.
Oldroyd says that he has been offered extravagant sums by stove dealers
for this stove, they wanting it presumably to use as an advertisement.
Another valuable piece of furniture is the wooden office chair which Mr.
Lincoln used when he first began to practise law in 1837. A chair of
still greater interest is an old-fashioned haircloth rocker in which he
sat in Ford’s Theatre on the night on which he received his death-wound.
Several autograph letters from Mr. Lincoln are owned by Mr. Oldroyd. By
far the most interesting specimen of his writing is the short
autobiography which he prepared for his friend Jesse Fell before the
campaign of 1860. This autobiography was the foundation of all the
histories which were issued in such great numbers just before and after
his first election.
In Lincoln portraiture the collection is very full, though it is rather
from a historical point of view than from an artistic that it is
valuable. Mr. Oldroyd has copies of nearly all of the engravings and
lithographs issued in Mr. Lincoln’s lifetime. He has also a splendid lot
of wood-cuts gathered from newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets. In this
collection of prints there are numbers of views of the Lincoln family
and of various scenes connected with Mr. Lincoln’s public career. From
the spring of 1860 until after the funeral, in 1865, there were few
issues of the illustrated papers in this country which did not contain
something on the President. Mr. Oldroyd has succeeded in getting nearly
all of these prints, among them a great many caricatures. He has a full
set of “Vanity Fair,” and many of the Currier and Ives lithographs, now
so rare. An interesting feature of the collection is the number of
curios it contains—campaign documents of various kinds, such as badges,
medals, pins, letter paper and envelopes, flags, etc.
The use that was made by advertisers of Lincoln’s face during his
Presidency is shown by a case of common articles; there are tomato cans,
soap, washing fluid, tobacco pouches, cigarette cases, spruce gum, and
many other trivial articles, all enclosed in highly-colored papers
bearing portraits of Mr. Lincoln, surrounded by a rail fence or some
popular campaign legend.
The only complete collection of the portraits of Lincoln issued by the
government which we have ever seen, Mr. Oldroyd owns. Among them is a
revenue stamp calling for five pounds of tobacco; another is good for
seventy gallons of distilled spirits, a third for four ounces of snuff,
and a fourth calls for cigarettes. Lincoln’s head appears on a variety
of postage stamps; the four, six, fifteen, and ninety-cent stamps all
bear his face. The six-cent stamp of each of the Departments has a head
of Lincoln. The old fifty-cent “shin plaster” is exhibited. It was the
only one of our scrip issue which bore a head of Lincoln. His picture is
also to be found on a ten-dollar greenback, a one-hundred-dollar United
States note, and a one-hundred-dollar government bond.
The most valuable portion of the Oldroyd collection is undoubtedly its
books, pamphlets, and clippings. The library contains almost all of the
biographies which have been issued, a large number of memoirs by
contemporaries of Lincoln, and many war records. There are copies of
some three hundred different sermons delivered at the time of Lincoln’s
death, as well as a great number of the pieces of music composed in his
honor.
A precious book in Mr. Oldroyd’s Lincoln library is the Bible owned by
Thomas Lincoln, the father of the President. This Bible bears the date
of 1798; it undoubtedly went with the Lincolns from Kentucky to Indiana,
and was carried from there by them when they moved into Illinois. It was
kept in the family of Thomas Lincoln’s step-children until 1892, when it
was sold to be exhibited at the World’s Fair. It afterward passed to Mr.
Oldroyd.
At present it is not known what will be done with the Oldroyd
collection. The owner has made heroic efforts to keep it together, and
it is to be hoped that some way will open by which he can realize his
ambition.
* * * * *
_A series of articles on the middle and later periods of Lincoln’s life
will be found in the_ MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE, _beginning with the number for
March, 1896. These articles are prepared by the authors of the present
volume, assisted by many persons who were in close personal association
with Lincoln, and possess important facts and reminiscences never before
published. The articles are very fully illustrated with numerous
portraits of Lincoln, his friends and associates, and with pictures,
specially drawn or photographed for the Magazine, of all important
places and scenes with which he was connected._
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors.
2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.