247. John Hill to Herndon, Petersburg, Illinois, 6 June 1865, HI, 23. Hill asserted that “I have this from W. G. Greene & others as the truth.”
248. Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, Jan. 1891, H-W MSS DLC.
249. Colfax told this story to Franz Mueller. “Lincoln and Colfax,” reminiscences by Mueller, enclosed in Mueller to Ida Tarbell, Spokane, 13 Feb. 1896, Ida M. Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College.
250. John Hay to John G. Nicolay, Washington, 20 June 1864, Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side, 85.
251. Reminiscences of a Dr. Hatch, Washington correspondence by Frank G. Carpenter, 8 Apr., Cleveland Leader, 9 Apr. 1884.
252. Lincoln told this to James A. Briggs, a Cleveland attorney and businessman who served as the Ohio state agent in New York and was a Republican Party leader and orator. Cincinnati Commercial, n.d., copied in the Belleville, Illinois, Advocate, 8 June 1866, copied in the card catalogue of Lincolniana, microform division, IHi. It was reprinted with the wrong date (8 July 1866, a day on which the weekly paper was not published) in The Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 32 (1939):399. Lincoln commended Briggs to the attention of William Henry Seward, saying “I know James A. Briggs, and believe him to be an excellent man.” Lincoln to Seward, Washington, 11 Aug. 1862, CWL, 5:367.
253. Adam Badeau, Grant in Peace: From Appomattox to Mount McGregor; A Personal Memoir (Hartford, CT: S. S. Scranton, 1887), 357.
254. Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 16 Jan. 1886, H-W MSS DLC.
255. Herndon to Horace White, Springfield, 13 Feb. 1891, White Papers, IHi.
256. Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 8, 15, 16 Jan. 1886, H-W MSS DLC.
257. John Hay to John G. Nicolay, Washington, 5 and 9 Apr. 1862, in Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side, 19–20; John G. Nicolay to John Hay, Washington, 29 Jan. 1864, in Michael Burlingame, ed., With Lincoln in the White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860–1865 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 125; Dr. Stone paraphrased in the manuscript diary of General John Meredith Read Jr., quoted in Old Hickory Book Shop (New York) catalogue, n.d., clipping in the Lincoln files, “Wife” folder, Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee; Benjamin Brown French to his son Frank, Washington, 9 July 1865, French Family Papers, DLC.
258. James H. Matheny, interview with Herndon, 3 May 1866, HI, 251. Matheny had heard stories about Mrs. Lincoln from the “Butler girls,” presumably the daughters of William Butler, at whose Springfield home Lincoln had boarded for years before his wedding. Ibid.
259. Undated statement by Gourley in Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 121–122. A Pennsylvania-born boot and shoemaker, Gourley (1810?–1876) lived for several years at the corner of Jackson and Ninth Streets, one block from the Lincolns’ house.
260. Reminiscences of Page Eaton, Utica Herald, n.d., copied in the Belvedere, Illinois, Standard, 14 Apr. 1868. Eaton’s life is summarized in Wayne C. Temple, “Builder of Lincoln’s Home: Page Eaton” (pamphlet; Harrogate, TN: Lincoln Memorial University Press, 1962), 1–3. Eaton lived at the south end of Fifth Street in 1855.
261. Judge Anthony Thornton heard Peter Van Bergen state this. Judge Thornton interviewed by Jesse W. Weik, Shelbyville, 18 June 1895, Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 375.
262. Emilie Todd Helm, interview with William H. Townsend, 27 Dec. 1922, Townsend Papers, University of Kentucky, Lexington. On another occasion, Mrs. Helm said that Mary “had a high temper, and perhaps did not always have it under control.” Helm, Mary, Wife of Lincoln, 110.
263. Harriet Hanks Chapman in Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 94; Mrs. John A. Logan, Thirty Years in Washington; or, Life and Scenes in Our National Capital (Hartford, CT: A. D. Worthington, 1901), 646.
264. Interview with Mrs. Alexander R. McKee (née Martinette Hardin), Marietta Holdstock Brown, “A Romance of Lincoln,” clipping identified as “Indianapolis, January 1896,” LMF.
265. Eleanor Gridley to Honore Morrow, n.p., 30 Jan. 1932, copy, Gridley Papers, ICHi.
266. Corneau, “Road of Remembrance,” 118; Octavia Roberts, Lincoln in Illinois (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), 53.
267. Reminiscences of Mrs. Cecelia McConnell, who in 1856, at the age of 18, went to Springfield to live with her aunt and uncle. Buffalo Courier-Express, 11 Aug. 1929, section 9, p. 2.
268. Ida M. Andrews to Jesse W. Weik, Indianapolis, 8 Jan. 1917, Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 318. Mrs. Andrews was a daughter of Leaton and a niece of Matheny.
269. Statement of Robert Williams, Bloomington, Illinois, 9 Feb. 1923, William E. Barton Papers, University of Chicago.
270. Mrs. Jacob M. Early observed this scene. Judith Peterson, “Secret of an Unhappy Incident,” Illinois Junior Historian 5 (Feb. 1952): 91. The author heard this story from her grandmother’s cousin, Beulah Miles Wood. Miss Peterson was the great-great-great granddaughter of George U. Miles, who married Catherine Rickard Early after her first husband, Jacob Early, was murdered. Mrs. Early was the sister of Mrs. William Butler, at whose home Lincoln boarded from 1837 to 1842. In 1840, Lincoln became guardian ad litem of Mrs. Early’s two young sons. Seven years later he represented her in a chancery suit. Harry E. Pratt, “Abraham Lincoln’s First Murder Trial,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 37 (1944):248–249.
271. Mrs. Early often told this story to her nephew Jimmy Miles, who in turn related it to Dale Carnegie. Carnegie, Lincoln the Unknown (New York: Century, 1932), 72. Louis A. Warren, commenting on Mary Lincoln’s reputation for having “a quick temper and a sharp tongue,” said that “[p]ossibly she threw coffee at Lincoln and drove him out of the house with a broom and probably he deserved it.” Lincoln Lore, no. 15 Feb. 1937.
272. Thurlow Weed observed this outburst. Alvan F. Sanborn, ed., Reminiscences of Richard Lathers: Sixty Years of a Busy Life in South Carolina, Massachusetts and New York (New York: Grafton Press, 1907), 184.
273. Margaret Ryan, interview with Jesse W. Weik, 27 Oct. 1886, HI, 597; Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 23 Jan. 1886, H-W MSS DLC.
274. Dubois, undated interview with Jesse W. Weik, HI, 692.
275. Thomas Stackpole, the White House steward, told this to Ward Hill Lamon. Lamon, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 467.
276. Mrs. Hillary A. Gobin (née Clara Leaton [1854–1941]) to Albert J. Beveridge, South Bend, Indiana, 17 May 1923, Beveridge Papers, DLC. Mrs. Gobin’s father, James Leaton, pastor of the Methodist Church in Springfield (1858–1859), lived with his family at Fifth and Monroe Streets, five blocks from the Lincolns’ house. In 1895 she became the second wife of Dr. Gobin, president of DePauw University and a Methodist minister. She had previously been married to Harry Lincoln Beals (1864–1893). Material on Mrs. Gobin can be found in the Hillary A. Gobin Papers, folder 8, DePauw University, Green-castle, Indiana.
277. Stephen Whitehurst, interview with Herndon, [1885–1889], HI, 722. Whitehurst had heard this story from a man named Barrett, who allegedly observed the episode in 1856 or 1857. This Barrett was probably John H. Barrett, deputy assessor of Sangamon County, who lived on Jackson Street, between Third and Fourth Streets, near the Lincolns.
278. Mrs. George Carleton Beal (née Lizzie De Crastos in 1856) quoted in the New York Times, 6 Feb. 1938; Commonweal, 2 Mar. 1932, 494.
279. In 1950, Christiana Bertram said that “many years ago I met two people who had been neighbors of the Lincolns in Springfield” who shared this story with her. Christiana Bertram, letter to the editor of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Tenafly, NJ, n.d., issue of 5 Mar. 1950.
280. Margaret Ryan, interview with Jesse W. Weik, 27 Oct. 1886, HI, 597.
281. Turner R. King, interview with Herndon, McLain Station, Illinois, [1865–1866], HI, 465. As a congressman, Lincoln helped King obtain the post of register of the Springfield land office. As president, he appointed him collector of internal revenue for the Eighth District of Illinois. Ibid., 758.
282. Herndon to Caroline
H. Dall, Springfield, 28 Jan. 1862, Dall Papers, MHi. Herndon had just returned from a visit to Washington, where he saw Lincoln.
283. Paul M. Angle, “Notes of Interview with Mrs. Fanny Grimsley, July 27, 1926,” enclosed in Angle to William E. Barton, Springfield, 10 Jan. 1927, William E. Barton Papers, University of Chicago. A life-long resident of Springfield, Mary Frances Burch Grimsley (1846–1927) was the wife of William P. Grimsley and the daughter of William S. Burch, who lived across Eighth Street from the Lincolns. “Philip Dingle,” age 5, appears in the 1850 census of Sangamon County. The 1860 census for Sangamon County lists Phillip Dinkell living in the Lincoln household as a servant. Military records show German-born Philip Dinkle, age 18, on the rolls of the Union army in 1862–1863. He died of consumption in 1865. Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 27 Oct. 1865. His widowed mother, Barbara Dinkel, lived a block and a half from the Lincolns, on Edwards Street between Eighth and Ninth, according to the 1860–1861 Springfield City Directory. Wayne C. Temple, By Square & Compass: Saga of the Lincoln’s Home (Mahomet, IL: Mayhaven, 2002), 132–133; George J. Dinkel to Lincoln, Memphis, 28 May 1864, AL MSS DLC.
284. James H. Matheny, undated interview with Jesse W. Weik, HI, 667n.; Matheny, interview with Herndon, Jan. 1887, ibid., 713–714; Herndon to Weik, Springfield, Jan. 1887, H-W MSS DLC; Roland W. Diller’s recollections of Matheny’s story, in Paul Hull, “Lincoln in Springfield,” New York Mail and Express, 8 Feb. 1896, p. 15. There is some confusion about the miller’s last name. In the 1850 Sangamon County census, a miller named Jacob Tiger is listed. He was 27 and born in Ohio. In the files of the Sangamon Valley Collection at Springfield’s Lincoln Public Library is a patent deed dated 4 Dec. 1865 showing that Jacob Tiger of Springfield purchased an interest in a patent for certain improvements in hominy mills. An advertisement in the 1866 Springfield City Directory identifies Jacob Tiger as the proprietor of Phoenix Mills, formerly Grimsley’s Mills, corner Tenth and Madison. Jesse W. Weik claimed that the miller’s name was actually Taggart. Weik, memorandum book, Weik Papers, IHi. No such person is listed in the Springfield census or city directory. Giving no reasons for his conclusion or any evidence to support it, David Donald dismissed this story as both a “malicious rumor” and “a joke.” David Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), 304.
285. Josiah P. Kent, interview with Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 21 Nov. 1916, Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 363; reminiscences of Olivia Leidig Whiteman (Mrs. James M.), Vandalia, Illinois, correspondence, 4 Feb., New York Herald, 10 Feb. 1929, section 3, p. 4. Josiah Kent is listed as a 13-year-old in the 1860 Federal Census of Sangamon County. His father Jesse was a carriage maker and carpenter. The Kents lived five houses north of the Lincolns on the same side of Eighth Street in the same block. Mrs. Whiteman was born in Vandalia; after her parents died when she was young, she was raised by her aunt, Julia Ann Sprigg (Mrs. John C.), who lived on Eighth Street between Jackson and Edwards Streets, half a block from the Lincoln house. Mary Lincoln was quite fond of Mrs. Sprigg. See her letter of 29 May [1862] to Mrs. Sprigg in Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 127–128. Olivia Leidig said she was “in the Lincoln home often.” Interview with William E. Barton, Vandalia, 10 Apr. 1923, Barton Papers, University of Chicago.
286. Mrs. Benjamin S. Edwards in Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 162.
287. Lincoln to Speed, Springfield, 22 Oct. 1846, CWL, 1:391. Ruth Painter Randall’s claim that “the Lincolns did not spank their children” is clearly wrong. Randall, Lincoln’s Animal Friends (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958), 89. Also wrong is Jean Baker’s similar assertion. Jean Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 122.
288. Margaret Ryan, interview with Jesse W. Weik, 27 Oct. 1886, HI, 597.
289. Frank Edwards, “A Few Facts along the Lincoln Way,” typescript enclosed in Mrs. Jacob H. Stoner to William E. Barton, Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, 21 July 1930, uncatalogued material, box 10, folder 180, Barton Papers, University of Chicago. A 6-month-old Francis Edwards is listed in the 1850 Sangamon County census. His father was William Edwards.
290. Undated interview with Elizabeth Edwards by Jesse W. Weik, Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 355. Many children endured corporal punishment in mid-nineteenth-century Illinois. George Perrin Davis, son of David Davis, recalled that when he was 8 years old, he once amused himself by heating and bending a poker in the fireplace. “Whether or not my mother whipped me afterwards I don’t remember, but it was very likely, as it was the custom in those days.” George Perrin Davis to [Jesse W. Weik], n.p., n.d., ibid., 350.
291. Anna Eastman Jackson, quoted in A. Longfellow Fiske, “A Neighbor of Lincoln,” Commonweal, 2 Mar. 1932, 494. In 1860, Anna H. Eastman (1842–1920) appears in the Sangamon County Federal Census as living with her sister, mother, and father, Asa Eastman (1804–1888), a prosperous miller and native of Maine. He was known as “the grain and flour king” of central Illinois. Joseph Wallace, Past and Present of the City of Springfield and Sangamon County, Illinois (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1904), 823; John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Frontier (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 175–176. The Springfield City Directory for 1855 gives the Eastmans’ address as the corner of Eighth and Edwards, one block from the Lincolns’ house. Anna Eastman married James M. Johnson of St. Louis. After his death, she returned to Springfield.
292. Walter Graves to Ida M. Tarbell, Salina, Kansas, 18 Aug. 1929, Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College.
293. Harriet A. Chapman to Herndon, Charleston, Illinois, 21 Nov. 1866, HI, 407.
294. Reminiscences of Thomas Stackpole, Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 20 June 1865. Mary Lincoln denied this story, claiming that her children never had such shoes. “It is a new story—that in my life I have ever whipped a child—In the first place they, never required it, a gentle, loving word, was all sufficient with them—and if I have erred, it has been, in being too indulgent.” Mary Lincoln to Alexander Williamson, Chicago, 15 June 1865, Turner and Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln, 251. In light of other evidence of her violent temper and child-beating, this denial is unconvincing. Moreover, mothers have traditionally been more likely to abuse their children than their fathers have been. Murray A. Straus, Richard J. Gelles, Suzanne K. Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1988), 65–72, 212–218.
295. Reminiscences of Mrs. Mary Virginia Pinkerton Thompson, in Frazier Hunt, “The Little Girl Who Sat on Lincoln’s Lap,” Good Housekeeping, Feb. 1931, 17.
296. Herndon to Jesse W. Weik, Springfield, 16 Jan. 1886, H-W MSS DLC.
297. Reminiscences of Page Eaton, Utica Herald, n.d., copied in the Belvidere, Illinois, Standard, 14 Apr. 1868.
298. Herndon told this to Caroline Dall in the fall of 1866, according to Dall’s “Journal of a tour through Illinois, Wisconsin and Ohio, Oct. & Nov. 1866,” entry for 29 Oct. 1866, Dall Papers, Bryn Mawr College.
299. Victor Kutchin to the editor of the New York Times, Green Lake, Wisconsin, 21 Aug., New York Times, 26 Aug. 1934; see also ibid., 29 July 1934. Kutchin was a close friend of Mason Brayman, to whom Lincoln entrusted the couch when he left Springfield in 1861. Brayman in turn gave it to Kutchin.
300. In the mid-to-late 1880s, David Bigelow Parker was told this by “an elderly man” who was a fellow passenger aboard a train. That gentleman heard the story from an old friend in Ohio. David Bigelow Parker, A Chautauqua Boy in ’61 (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1912), 47–48.
301. Josiah P. Kent, in Weik, Real Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 126, 362–363.
302. Herndon to Isaac N. Arnold, Springfield, 24 Oct. [18]83, Lincoln Collection, ICHi.
303. Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Burlingame, 119.
304. Fiske, “A Neighbor of Lincoln,” 494.
305. In 1950, Christiana Bertram said that “many years ago I met two people who had been neighbors of the Lincolns in Springfield” who shared this story with her
. Christiana Bertram, letter to the editor of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Tenafly, NJ, n.d., issue of 5 Mar. 1950.
306. Eleanor Gridley, The Story of Abraham Lincoln; or, The Journey from the Log Cabin to the White House (Chicago: Monarch, 1902), 167.
307. Pascal P. Enos, interview with Herndon, [1865–1866], HI, 449. Ellis was postmaster of Springfield from 1849 to 1853.
308. The carpenter’s story was reported by Mary Todd Melvin Dewing (b. 1861), a neighbor whose family was close to the Lincolns. “A Child Neighbor’s Memories of Springfield,” Christian Science Monitor, 12 Feb. 1925. Samuel Houston Melvin, who lived with his family one block from the Lincolns at Eighth and Market Streets, evidently became Lincoln’s druggist in late 1860. Temple, From Skeptic to Prophet, 97–101.
309. Reminiscences of Mary Scott Uda, New York Herald Tribune, 7 Feb. 1926. The writer stated that her Kentucky-born father, an old-line Whig and a prominent physician, was friendly with Lincoln.
310. John B. Brownlow to Henry B. Rankin, Knoxville, Tennessee, 2 Sept. 1920, Rankin Papers, IHi. As a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Pensions, Brownlow’s father, William G. Brownlow, heard the testimony, which was never published.
311. Decatur, Illinois, Herald, 7 Feb. 1909. In 1860, Sarah B. Corneau, age 37, is listed in the federal census for Sangamon County. The 1855 Springfield City Directory indicates that her household, headed by Stephen A. Corneau, deputy clerk of the county court, resided at the corner of Eighth and Adams Streets, three blocks from the Lincolns’ house.
312. Photocopy of an unidentified clipping from a Springfield newspaper, [ca. Apr. 1930], in the author’s possession. Mrs. DeSouza (1840–1932) lived in Springfield from 1856 till her death. According to her obituary, she “was employed by the Lincolns for several months. After Lincoln received the nomination for president, Mrs. DeSouza was kept busy making beautiful clothes for Mrs. Lincoln.” Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 31 Aug. 1932. Charlotte K. Rodrigues married Manuel DeSouza on 26 Mar. 1860. Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 27 Mar. 1860. Mrs. De Souza told Octavia Roberts Corneau that Mrs. Lincoln would “stand no sassy talk.” Octavia Roberts Corneau, “My Townsman—Abraham Lincoln,” typescript of a talk given to the Lincoln Group of Boston, 18 Nov. 1939, 14, Abraham Lincoln Association reference files, “Reminiscences,” folder 5, IHi.
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1 Page 145
