Creative Retirement, Friday Round Table.
" Lincoln in Springfield " , 16Aug'13.
Harald Ghormley's family had a back yard that connected to Lincoln's in Springfield. His wife, Pat, was a southern girl, majored in history, so she had to study up on Lincoln. Her talk today had much original research/conclusions, unpublished elsewhere.
Mary Todd has 14 cousins considered insane possibly from extensive intermarriage among the limited plantation owner class. Yet her family founded a college and Mary had the equivalent learning of a degree and was used to having top politicians at diner conversation. Moved to live with her sister in frontier Springfield where 14 men for one woman.
Abe Lincoln's father was probably not his, no resemblance and father did not treat as son. Suffered from melancholia (depression) exaggerated when girl friend, Ann Rutledge, died, along with his mother and sister. All his women left him.
When Lincoln's store failed in New Salem, he decided on law and politics.
Mary Owens had gone back to Ky for several years seeking a gentleman, not found, inquired and in a mail relationship agreed to come back for Lincoln. But she had gotten old, wrinkled, and fat. Lincoln wrote her of the hardships she would have with him and each rejected the proposal.
Lincoln elected to Ill legislature.
Lincoln and Mary Todd hit it off at political gatherings.
His best friend decided one day to sell out and return to KY.
Lincoln broke engagement and took to bed for three weeks. One day returned to work and
made overtures to Mary Todd.
Duel. Anonymous Letters to Editor criticizing an official. Too literate to be written alone by Lincoln. Fellow guessed Lincoln and challenged to duel. Illegal in Ill, so to an island in Miss. River with a dueling range. On the way Abe took a broad sword and topped trees and high branches showing his reach exceeded that of the little challenger. Abe said no more letters would ever appear and both went home happy and alive.
Mary Todd awoke one morning at her sister's house and said I am going to marry Mr. Lincoln today. Family did not approve of bumpkin-like Lincoln, but a wedding was planned and performed that evening. Ghormley said it had to have been in the works for some time because four brides maids and two preachers were on hand at short notice. Severe storm that day, indicative of things to come.
Lincoln did not like the name Abraham. Most called his Lincoln. Mary called him Mr. Lincoln or You old fool.
Robert born 9-months later. Joy to both. Their happy time. His law prospered. Lived in a hotel.
One day he came home and told Mary he had bought them a house. Mary had been raised with five house slaves and had no ideal how to cook, clean, care for kid, or anything about running a house. Lincoln road the circuit 6-months of year. Mary went downhill under the strain. Obviously bi-polar. Lincoln was paid $5K for winning a RR case. Known for always winning -- he was losing a murder case and opened a window and suggested to his client that the water was sweet in KY.
A colleague was harangued by Mary and he told Lincoln. He commented, you had twenty minutes, I have it every day.
While he was gone on circuit, Mary had the simple 1-1/2 story house converted into a 2-story mansion for entertaining. Abe enjoyed the company of lawyers and politicians, not home much, even when back in town.
Young Robert born cross-eyed, surgery in Chicago without anesthesia, but cured condition.
Elected to House of Representatives, they moved to Washington, Mary was pleased at going to the center of political-social life and being the wife of "someone".. Invited to their first party, she turned people off and was never invited again.
Family photos of Mary Lincoln and Ghormlys. I had to leave at mid-point break.
Additional Research
=================
Abraham Lincoln, Mary Owens, and the accidental engagement
Published by trenholm @ gilder... on Wed, 2012-04-18 12:51
In 1836, Abraham Lincoln found himself in a tenuous situation. He was engaged to a woman he barely knew and didn’t want
to marry. Mrs. Elizabeth Abell had been pushing for a romance between Lincoln and her sister, Mary Owens, whom Lincoln
had met briefly in 1833. When Elizabeth went home to visit her family in Kentucky three years later, she said she would
bring Mary back to Illinois if Lincoln would agree to marry her. Lincoln jokingly agreed. He realized the consequences
of his rash statement when Mary came to New Salem and considered herself engaged. Lincoln immediately regretted his
promise, and his papers record his objections to the woman’s appearance, weight, and temperament.
Too honorable to simply break the engagement, Lincoln wrote three letters to Mary during their engagement, painting a
bleak image of their future and subtly suggesting that she could do better. This letter, the second in the series, is
dated May 7, 1837, just after Lincoln moved from New Salem to Springfield. Mary would end their engagment in the fall.
Abraham Lincoln to Mary Owens, May 7, 1837 (Gilder Lehrman Collection)
Friend Mary
I have commenced two letters to send you before this, both of which displeased me before I got half done, and so I
tore them up. The first I thought wasn’t serious enough, and the second was on the other extreme. I shall send this,
turn out as it may.
This thing of living in Springfield is rather a dull business after all, at least it is so to me. I am quite as
lonesome here as ever was anywhere in my life. I have been spoken to by but one woman since I have been here, and should
not have been by her, if she could have avoided it. I’ve never been to church yet, nor probably shall not be soon. I
stay away because I am concious I should not know how to behave myself-
I am often thinking about what we said of your coming to live at Springfield. I am afraid you would not be
satisfied. There is a great deal of flourishing about in carriages here; which it would be your doom to see without
sharing in it. You would have to be poor without the means of hiding your poverty. Do you believe you could bear that
patiently? Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine should any ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to
make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can immagine, that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the
effort. I know I should be much happier with you than the way I am, provided I saw no signs of discontent in you. What
you have said to me may have been in jest, or I may have misunderstood it. If so, then let it be forgotten; if
otherwise, I much wish you would think seriously before you decide. For my part I have already decided. What I have
said I will most positively abide by, provided you wish it. My opinion is that you had better not do it. You have not
been accustomed to hardship, and it may be more severe than you now immagine.
I know you are capable of thinking correctly on any subject, and if you deliberate maturely upon this,
before you decide, then I am willing to abide your decision.
You must write me a good long letter after you get this. You have nothing else to do, and though it might not seem
interesting to you, after you have written it, it would be a good deal of company to me in this “busy wilderness”. Tell
your sister I dont want to hear any more about selling out and moving. That gives me the hypo whenever I think of it.
Yours &c.
Lincoln
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collections/treasures-from-the-collection/abraham-lincoln-mary-owens-and-accidental-engagement
And at
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2012/11/12/abraham_lincoln_s_letter_to_mary_owens_breaking_off_an_engagement_that_wasn.html
"In a later letter to friends, in which he recounted the story of the “scrape” with no small degree of humor, Lincoln said some quite unkind things about Owens’ physique, but also reserved a fair share of criticism for himself for having so thoroughly misunderstood the situation. “Others have been made fools of by the girls,” he wrote, “but this can never with truth be said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself.”
There is a book of the three Owens letters at:
http://archive.org/stream/abrahamlincolnma00linc#page/10/mode/2up
Mary Owens, left, and President Lincoln Mary Owens, left, and Lincoln (Photo Courtesy of Illinois State Historical Society/ Corbis)
On Wikipedia:
The sexuality of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the 16th President of the United States, has been a topic of historical debate and scholarship.[1] Although Lincoln was married to Mary Todd from November 4, 1842, until his death on April 15, 1865, and fathered four children with her, psychologist C. A. Tripp has observed that Lincoln's problematic and distant relationship with women stood in contrast to his warmer relations with a number of men in his life and that two of those relationships had possible homoerotic overtones. Some Lincoln biographers, including David Herbert Donald, have strongly contested claims that Lincoln was homosexual or bisexual. In opposing these claims, Donald cites Lincoln's letters, in which he frequently refers to acquaintances, even political enemies, as "my personal friend".
and
Lincoln's stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, commented that he "never took much interest in the girls". However some accounts of Lincoln's contemporaries suggest a strong but controlled passion for women.[23] Lincoln was devastated over the 1835 death of Ann Rutledge. While some historians have questioned whether there was in fact a romantic relationship between her and Lincoln, historian John Y. Simon reviewed the historiography of the subject and concluded, "Available evidence overwhelmingly indicates that Lincoln so loved Ann that her death plunged him into severe depression. More than a century and a half after her death, when significant new evidence cannot be expected, she should take her proper place in Lincoln biography." Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, in his biography of Lincoln, attests to the depth of Lincoln's love for Miss Rutledge. An anonymous poem about suicide published locally exactly three years after her death is widely attributed to Lincoln. His courting of Mary Owens was diffident. In 1837, he wrote to her from Springfield to give her an opportunity to break off their relationship. Lincoln wrote to a friend in 1838: "I knew she was oversize, but now she appeared a fair match for Falstaff".
and
Mary Todd Lincoln in 1846
Lincoln and Mary Todd met in Springfield in 1839 and became engaged in 1840.[36] In what historian Allen Guelzo calls "one of the murkiest episodes in Lincoln’s life", Lincoln called off his engagement to Mary Todd at the same time that the legislative program he had supported for years collapsed, his best friend Joshua Speed left Springfield, and John Stuart, Lincoln’s law partner, proposed ending their law practice.[37] Lincoln is believed to have suffered something approaching clinical depression. Lincoln's Preparation for Greatness: The Illinois Legislative Years by Paul Simon has a chapter covering the period that Lincoln later referred to as "The Fatal First", which was January 1, 1841. That was "the date on which Lincoln asked to be released from his engagement to Mary Todd". Simon explains that the various reasons the engagement was broken contradict one another and it was not fully documented, but he did become unusually depressed, which showed in his appearance, and that "it was traceable to Mary Todd". During this time, he avoided seeing Mary, causing her to comment that he "deems me unworthy of notice".
Jean H. Baker, historian and biographer of Mary Todd Lincoln, describes the relationship between Lincoln and his wife as "bound together by three strong bonds – sex, parenting and politics".[38] In addition to the anti-Mary Todd bias of many historians engendered by William Herndon’s (Lincoln's law partner and early biographer) personal hatred of Mrs. Lincoln, Baker discounts the criticism of the marriage as both a basic misunderstanding of the changing nature of marriage and courtship in the mid-19th century and attempts to judge the Lincoln marriage by modern standards.
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