2850 Lincoln Museum

Last night our book group discussed Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Our discussion leader had recently visited the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Most of us had never heard of this wonderful Lincoln resource so close to home (i.e., if you were going to be in northern Indiana anyway).

"In 1905, Arthur Hall and a group of business leaders from Fort Wayne, Indiana, founded The Lincoln National Life Insurance Company. Hall, a lifelong admirer of Abraham Lincoln, wrote to the president’s only surviving son, Robert Todd Lincoln, to ask for a photograph that the company might use on its letterhead. Robert replied, “I find no objection whatever to the use of a portrait of my father upon the letterhead of such a life insurance company named after him as you describe; and I take pleasure in enclosing you, for that purpose, what I regard as a very good photograph of him.”

The company prospered, and in 1928 Hall took the opportunity to repay the Lincoln family by creating the Lincoln Historical Research Foundation, dedicated to the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. The Foundation, under the leadership of Dr. Louis A. Warren, began to collect Lincoln-related material in 1928, published Lincoln Lore in 1929, and opened The Lincoln Museum to the public in 1931."

The very popular current exhibit (extended) is on weddings in American history which includes the story of the weddings of the three Mary Lincolns—Mary Todd Lincoln, Mary Harlan Lincoln and Mary Lincoln Isham.

Our next selection is A share in Death by Deborah Crombie. This is the first (1993) in a series, and although mysteries are my absolutely least favorite genre, I'll play along. Also, it's my turn to do dessert that night.

Abraham Lincoln