While getting to know President Lincoln better I could not be settled on his heritage. We do have genetic methods to test DNA and RNA to determine his sincere parents. It just seems to me it is still an issue to some.
Just to add; bibles were then an important part of life.
December 23, 2008
I spoke with Clark Evans, (click here) the Library of Congress's head of reference services, rare books, and special collections division, about the Abraham Lincoln Bible that Barack Obama will be sworn in on at his inauguration next month.
Excerpts:
This wasn't Lincoln's personal Bible?
It was not the Lincoln family Bible. That was probably traveling by train from Springfield [Lincoln's hometown, in Illinois] to Washington, so he had no personal copy of the Bible available for his inauguration on March 4, 1861. But William Thomas Carroll, clerk of the Supreme Court, had a few Bibles available. He'd given the same edition, published in Oxford in 1853, but a different copy to James Buchanan. Did Lincoln hold on to the Bible afterward?
After the inauguration, it remained with William Thomas Carroll and his wife, Sally. We don't know when the Carrolls passed it back to Abraham and Mary Lincoln, but it would have been shortly thereafter. Carroll was not just a passing acquaintance to the Lincoln family. When Lincoln's son Willie died in 1862, the Carrolls offered their vault in Georgetown for the body, and it remained there until 1865, when his body and Lincoln's went from Washington to Springfield. [The Bible] remained with the Lincoln family until 1928, when the wife of Robert Todd Lincoln, who died in 1926 and was the only Lincoln son to make it to adulthood, gave it to the library. From the pictures, the Bible looks to be showing signs of wear....
Just to add; bibles were then an important part of life.
December 23, 2008
I spoke with Clark Evans, (click here) the Library of Congress's head of reference services, rare books, and special collections division, about the Abraham Lincoln Bible that Barack Obama will be sworn in on at his inauguration next month.
Excerpts:
This wasn't Lincoln's personal Bible?
It was not the Lincoln family Bible. That was probably traveling by train from Springfield [Lincoln's hometown, in Illinois] to Washington, so he had no personal copy of the Bible available for his inauguration on March 4, 1861. But William Thomas Carroll, clerk of the Supreme Court, had a few Bibles available. He'd given the same edition, published in Oxford in 1853, but a different copy to James Buchanan. Did Lincoln hold on to the Bible afterward?
After the inauguration, it remained with William Thomas Carroll and his wife, Sally. We don't know when the Carrolls passed it back to Abraham and Mary Lincoln, but it would have been shortly thereafter. Carroll was not just a passing acquaintance to the Lincoln family. When Lincoln's son Willie died in 1862, the Carrolls offered their vault in Georgetown for the body, and it remained there until 1865, when his body and Lincoln's went from Washington to Springfield. [The Bible] remained with the Lincoln family until 1928, when the wife of Robert Todd Lincoln, who died in 1926 and was the only Lincoln son to make it to adulthood, gave it to the library. From the pictures, the Bible looks to be showing signs of wear....
