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Register of Informants.

The brief biographical data given below represent an attempt to afford the reader some indication of who William H. Herndon's informants were and to suggest the kind of relationship, if any, each may have had with Abraham Lincoln. In consulting these entries, the reader is cautioned to bear in mind certain considerations. First, as most of these informants are not historic figures in the ordinary sense, basic information about them is generally hard to come by and has frequently proved unobtainable. In some cases it has not even been possible to ascertain birth and death dates. By contrast, the lives of some otherwise very obscure informants, thanks to genealogists and family historians, are reasonably well documented. Thus the information available to the editors has been highly uneven, and this circumstance is necessarily reflected in the entries.

Second, while the editors have endeavored to indicate possible sources of prejudice, the biases of Herndon's informants, like those of people in general, are often submerged and difficult to gauge. Politics is an obvious example. Many of the informants from Menard County, for instance, were Democrats and politically opposed to Lincoln for much of his career. Yet they often seem to be personally well disposed toward the man himself, who in turn was known for his ability to get along well with his political adversaries. Nor were political allegiances always static and straightforward. For example, to the intensely political men in Lincoln's circle who had to find their way past the wreckage of the Whig party in the 1850s, it mattered greatly whether one found refuge in the traditional Democratic party, took up with the nativist American party, or made common cause with the abolitionists by joining the Republican party. While these differences might be the source of bitter resentments and hard feelings, they were not always or equally so, and it is probably fair to say that most of the informants who disagreed with Lincoln's political course still liked him personally.

Third, in the absence of more pertinent information about the informants' character and credibility, circumstances showing their status or standing in their community are frequently cited, though it is duly acknowledged that these are no guarantors of integrity or reliability where personal testimony is concerned. Thus, gaining the limelight by election or appointment to office, while possibly indicative of public favor, is not here equated with honesty or candor. Nonetheless, such circumstances are offered to help identify the informants and to indicate their backgrounds and distinctions.

Full citations for the sources given in abbreviated form can be found in the Short Citations and Abbreviations section on pages xxix-xxxii. The letters cited

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as sources were solicited by the editors and are on file at the Knox College Library, Galesburg, Illinois.

Abell, Elizabeth (ca. 1804-?).

The wife of Dr. Bennett Abell and the sister of Mary Owens, Elizabeth Abell was described by AL's close friend William Butler as "a cultivated woman — very superior to the common run of women" in frontier Illinois. AL lived for a time with the Abells, and Butler believed that it was "from Mrs. Able [sic] he first got his ideas of a higher plane of life — that it was she who gave him the notion that he might improve himself by reading &c." In 1836 she promoted a courtship between AL and her sister. (Reep; Federal Census of Menard County, 1880; Burlingame)

Armstrong, Hannah (1811-90).

Hannah Armstrong's husband, Jack, leader of the notorious Clary's Grove boys, became a close friend of AL after their famous wrestling match. Thereafter, AL was a familiar presence in the Armstrong home, where Hannah Armstrong laundered and mended his clothes. After her husband died, she appealed twice to AL for help, and he responded by defending her son William "Duff" Armstrong, who was accused of murder, and later ordering his discharge from the Union army. (Ralph Shearer Rowland and Star Wilson Rowland. (Clary Genealogy: Four Early American Lines and Related Families. Fairfax, Va., 1980)

Armstrong, John (1814-77).

Postmaster of Springfield under AL's administration, Armstrong was a respected Sangamon County contractor and builder. In 1859 he was on the executive committee of the Republican party in Springfield, of which AL was also a member. (CW; ISJ, December 24, 1877)

Arnold, Isaac Newton (1815-84).

A Chicago attorney and officeholder who became acquainted with AL at the bar and in Illinois politics, Arnold wrote two of the earliest biographies of AL: History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery (Chicago, 1866); and The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago, 1885). (Mark E. Neely. Jr., ed. The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia. New York, 1982)

Ashley, James Mitchell (1824-96).

An abolitionist lawyer and editor from Toledo, Ohio, Ashley was elected to Congress in 1858. He introduced in 1863 the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. (Thomas A. McMullin and David Waler. Biographical Directory of American Territorial Governors. Westport, Conn., 1984.)

Baker, Edward L. (1829-97).

The son of David J. Baker, a prominent Illinois attorney and short-term U.S. senator. In 1855 Baker and a partner purchased the Illinois State Journal, the Springfield newspaper with which AL was strongly identified. (Newman Bateman and Paul Selby, comps. Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois. Chicago, 1894.)

Baker, George E..

An associate of William H. Seward, Baker edited Seward's Works before the Civil

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War and served as a clerk in the State Department during Seward's tenure there. (Glyndon G. Van Deusen, William Henry Seward [New York, 1967])

Baker, Luther Byron (1830-96).

During the Civil War Baker was a first lieutenant and regimental quartermaster of the First District of Columbia Cavalry. For helping to capture John Wilkes Booth, Baker received a $3,000 share of the government reward. (William Hanchett, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies [Urbana, Ill., 1983]; pension files, National Archives, Washington, D.C.)

Balch, George B. (1828-86).

A farmer who also served as postmaster and railroad agent in Coles County, Illinois, Balch initiated the movement to mark Thomas Lincoln's grave. (History of Coles County. Chicago, 1879; Coleman)

Bale, Esther Summers (1821-72).

Bale came to New Salem with her parents from Green County, Kentucky. In 1839 she married Hardin Bale, operator of a woolen mill there and later in Petersburg, Ill. (Hurdle)

Bale, Hardin (1816-79).

Born in Green County, Kentucky, Bale came to Illinois with his parents in 1830. He learned the milling business from his father and built a carding mill at New Salem in 1836-37. In 1839 Bale moved the establishment to Petersburg and began a partnership with Samuel Hill. (Hurdle; Miller)

Barnet, James.

Barnet was living in Camden, Oldham County, Kentucky, in 1867.

Barret, Richard Ferrel (1821-1908).

The husband of Sarah Rickard, Barret was a veteran of the Mexican War from Sangamon County and later practiced medicine in St. Louis and Kansas City. (Illinois State Journal, December 11, 1908; Power)

Barret, Sarah Rickard (1824-1911).

Sarah Rickard's sister Elizabeth was married to AL's close friend William Butler, a Whig politician and officeholder in Springfield. While boarding with the Butlers in the late 1830s, AL met Sarah and later proposed marriage. (ISJ, October 28, 1911; Power)

Barrett, George J. (1818-77).

A Methodist minister of New York birth, Barrett was a missionary to the Chippewa before serving in several other locations in Illinois. He was the father of Oliver R. Barrett, the Lincoln collector. (Minutes of the 54th Session of the Illinois Annual

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Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church [1877]; Minutes of the 94th Session of the Illinois Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church [1917]

Barrett, Joseph H. (1824-1910).

A Cincinnati Republican journalist and politician, Barrett penned one of the first Lincoln biographies, Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1865). [National Cyclopedia of American Biography. 60 vols. New York, 1893 — 1976]

Bartlett, Fred H..

Bartlett was a clerk employed by the mayor of Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1889.

Bateman, Newton (1822-97).

Between AL's election and his removal to Washington, D.C., Bateman, who was the state superintendent of public instruction, occupied an office adjacent to that of the president-elect in the Illinois State Capitol. Later Bateman was president of Knox College in Galesburg and editor in chief of the Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois. (DAB; HEI)

Bedell, Grace (1848-1936).

The little girl who suggested to the president-elect that he grow his beard. She was born in Westfield, New York, the daughter of a Republican stove and carriage maker. (The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia)

Bell, Elizabeth Herndon Graham (1833-88).

A daughter of the New Salem schoolmaster, Mentor Graham, "Lizzie" Herndon Graham Bell was born in New Salem. After her marriage to Abram Bell, she lived in Petersburg, where she was a leader in the temperance cause. (Walsh)

Bennett, John (1805-85).

A Petersburg, Illinois, storekeeper, Bennett knew AL before he moved to Springfield and served with him as a fellow Whig in the Illinois House of Representatives in 1840-41. (Wayne C. Temple, "Lincoln and Bennett: Story of a Store Account," Lincoln Herald (Fall 1967); Illustrated Atlas Map of Menard County. [IAMM])

Bennett, William.

This shadowy informant may have been a brickmaker in Petersburg, Illinois. History of Menard and Mason Counties, Illinois. (HMMC; Onstot)

Birch, Jonathan (ca. 1834-1906).

After examination by AL at Bloomington and subsequent admission to the Illinois bar, Birch moved to Covington, Indiana, and then to Greencastle to practice law. (Federal Census, Fountain County, Indiana, 1860; IDRPC)

Black, Chauncey Forward (1839-1904).

The ghostwriter of Ward Hill Lamon's 1872 Lincoln biography, Black was the son

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of Jeremiah Black, a stalwart of President Buchanan's cabinet. He became the law partner of Lamon after the Civil War and a Democratic politician in his own right. (New York Times, December 3, 1904)

Bliss, John Spoor (1832-91).

Bliss was a Wisconsin journalist who interviewed AL shortly after his nomination to the presidency. (USBD [Wisconsin]; Janesville Gazette, May 14, 1891)

Boal, Robert (1806-1903).

Boal was a medical doctor who served three terms in the Illinois legislature as a Whig and as a Republican. (TISHS [1904]; BEI)

Bradford, John S. (1815-92).

A veteran of the Mormon War, the Mexican War, and the California gold rush, Bradford held a number of offices in Springfield and Sangamon County and was said by JWW to have openly disliked AL. (HEI/Sangamon; ISJ, January 24, 1892; Weik)

Branson, Nathaniel William (1837-1907).

Branson was a Petersburg, Illinois, lawyer who dabbled in Republican politics. His wife, Fannie, was the daughter of Dr. Francis Regnier of New Salem. (Biographical Encyclopedia of Illinois of the Nineteenth Century)

Brinkerhoff, George Madoc (1839-1928).

A disbursing clerk in the office of the Illinois state auditor during the Civil War, Brinkerhoff was comptroller of the city of Springfield from 1865 to 1870. (HEI/ Sangamon; HSC; JISHS 21:3 [1928])

Brooks, Samuel S. (1801-65).

Brooks was an early Illinois Democratic newspaper editor who began his career in Edwardsville in 1832 and was later associated with newspapers in eight other Illinois communities. (Franklin Scott, comp., Newspapers and Periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879, Collections of the ISHL. No. 6., 1910; "Woodland Cemetery Records," Quincy, Ill.)

Brown, Alfred Mackenzie (1811-1903).

Born, like AL, near Hodgenville, Kentucky, Brown lived most of his life in Elizabethtown, where as a young man he entered the store of John B. Helm as an apprentice and eventually became a partner. He was a strong Confederate sympathizer. (Who was Who in Hardin County)

Brown, Christopher C. (1834-1904).

Brown studied law at Transylvania University and was admitted to the Illinois bar in Springfield in 1856 after being examined by AL and WHH. In 1859 he married "Bettie" Stuart, the daughter of John T. Stuart, and entered the law firm of

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Stuart and Edwards. (Wayne C. Temple, ed., Lincoln as Seen by C. C. Brown [Prairie Village, Kans., 1963])

Bryant, John Howard (1807-1902).

A brother of the poet William Cullen Bryant, John Bryant lived in Bureau County, Illinois, and was a founder of the state's Republican party. He was appointed a collector of internal revenue by AL in 1862. (HEI)

Burba, Erastus R. (1815-93).

Born in New York, Burba came to Hodgenville, Kentucky, in 1843 and in 1862 was elected county clerk of LaRue County. (Federal Census, LaRue County, 1850; Benningfield)

Campbell, Alexander (1814-98).

Campbell moved to LaSalle, Illinois, in 1850 to become involved in coal mining and in Whig and Republican politics. During the campaigns of 1856 and 1858, he loaned AL money for incidental campaign expenses. In 1858 he was elected to the Illinois House. (Biographical Directory of the American Congress; Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era [Princeton, N.J., 1964])

Cannon, Legrand B. (1815-1906).

A New York banker and outspoken advocate of the Union, Cannon organized pro-Union activities in New York City, including a mass meeting in Union Square. Given an army commission, he served on the staff of Major General John E. Wool at Fortress Monroe, where he met AL. (New York Times, November 4, 1906)

Carman, Caleb (1805-88).

Born in Canada in 1805, Carman came to Illinois about 1820 with his father, who ran a saw and grist mill at Sangamo Town on the Sangamon River. Carman first knew AL in 1831, when AL was helping to build a flatboat near Sangamo Town, and later at New Salem, where Carman worked as a carder and shoemaker and took in AL as a boarder. (Onstot; McKenzie)

Carpenter, Francis B. (1830-1900).

In 1864 Carpenter spent six months in the White House working on a portrait of AL, his "First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln." Carpenter's memoir of this experience, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln (1866), is a much-cited source of Lincoln anecdotes. (DAB; The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia)

Cassidy, Michael Marion (1825-1905).

Cassidy was a farmer, lawyer, judge, and coal mine developer in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. (Samuel M. Cassidy, The Cassidy Family and Related Lines [Lexington, Ky., 1985]; William DePrez Inlow, In Old Kentucky: The Story of My Forbears [Shelbyville, Ky., 1950])

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Chandler, Charles (1806-79).

The founder of the town of Chandlerville, Illinois, was born in Connecticut and moved to Illinois in 1831. (HEI/Cass)

Chapman, Augustus H. (1822-98).

Chapman married Harriet A. Hanks, daughter of AL's second cousin, Dennis F. Hanks, and Sarah Elizabeth Johnston Hanks, AL's stepsister. After serving as an officer in the war, Chapman was appointed agent for the Flathead Indians in Montana by President Johnson in 1865. (Charleston Courier, September 15, 1898; Coleman)

Chapman, Harriet Hanks (1826-1915).

The daughter of AL's stepsister Sarah Elizabeth Johnston Hanks and his second cousin, Dennis F. Hanks. Harriet Hanks grew up near, and continued to live close by her grandmother, Sarah Bush Johnston and her grandmother's second husband, Thomas Lincoln, AL's father. In the mid-1840s she lived for a year and a half with AL's family in Springfield. (Coleman)

Clagett, William T..

Clagett's testimony indicates that he was raised in Grayson County, Kentucky.

Clark, Henry (1805-87).

Clark came to Illinois in 1826 from Barren County, Kentucky. A neighbor and friend of AL and fellow soldier in the Black Hawk War, Clark chose AL as his second in a fistfight. (Petersburg Observer, July 18, 1887; Reep; letter from Lola B. Clark, April 29, 1992)

Clary, Royal A. (1813-74).

After emigrating from Tennessee, Clary's family helped establish the Clary's Grove settlement near the future site of New Salem. In 1832 Clary served with AL's company in the Black Hawk War. When almost fifty years of age, Clary enlisted in the Union army. (Onstot; Whitney; CG)

Cogdal, Isaac (1812-87).

A native of Kentucky, Isaac Cogdal was a farmer and stone mason who operated a quarry in Menard County and provided material for many buildings in the region. An active Whig and later Republican, Cogdal eventually was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1860, having been encouraged in the law by his old New Salem friend, AL. (Onstot; HEI/Sangamon)

Collins, Richard H. (1824-89).

Collins, a graduate of Centre College and Transylvania Law School, worked as an editor and historian, an attorney, and a judge. (Lawyers and Lawmakers of Kentucky [Chicago, 1897]; BEK)

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Conkling, Edgar.

A brother of AL's friend James C. Conkling and a former resident of Springfield, Edgar Conkling was a successful manufacturer and railroad promoter in Cincinnati. (Charles Cist, Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati in 1851 [Cincinnati, 1851]; letter from Anne B. Shepherd, August 23, 1994)

Conkling, James Cook (1816-99).

Conkling came to Springfield in 1838 and developed a close personal and professional relationship with AL. He served on the Republican State Central Committee and was a presidential elector in 1860 and 1864. Through Conkling, AL defended his positions on emancipation and the use of blacks in the military in a letter to a Springfield Union meeting in August 1863. (ALE)

Crawford, Elizabeth (1806-92).

With her husband, Josiah, Elizabeth Crawford came in 1826 from Kentucky to Spencer County, Indiana, where they were near neighbors to AL's family. AL and his father were both employed at various times by Josiah Crawford, who supported AL's presidential campaigns and his course during the Civil War. (Adams; Spencer County [Ind.] Cemetery Inscriptions [Rockport, Ind., 1987])

Crawford, Samuel A. (ca. 1826-1900).

A lifelong resident of Spencer County, Indiana, Samuel Crawford was the son of AL's neighbors Josiah and Elizabeth Crawford and the husband of Nancy Ann Grigsby. (Indiana Pocket Weekly, September 28, 1889; Adams; Crawford file, LBNM)

Creal, Richard A. (1801-81).

Creal was a farmer in LaRue County, Kentucky, who lived on the Lincoln birthplace farm in 1866. (Federal Census, Larue County, 1850, 1880; Edward Benningfield, comp., LaRue County, Kentucky, Cemetery Records [Owensboro, Ky., 1982])

Cullom, Shelby Moore (1829-1914).

At AL's suggestion Cullom studied law with John T. Stuart and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1855. A Republican, he served as Speaker of the Illinois House, U.S. congressman, governor of Illinois, and was a longtime member of the U.S. Senate. (DAB; Howard)

Davis, David (1815-86).

Born in Maryland and educated at Kenyon College, Davis came to Illinois in the 1830s to practice law, eventually settling in Bloomington. Elected as a Whig to the state legislature in 1844, he attended the state constitutional convention of 1847, devoting special attention to the judiciary. For fourteen years (1848-62) he presided over the Eighth Judicial Circuit in Illinois. AL practiced before him for

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over ten years and at times presided over Davis's court when the judge had other business. At the Republican convention in Chicago in 1860, Davis managed AL's nomination effort, and in February 1861 he accompanied AL to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration. In 1862 AL appointed Davis to the U.S. Supreme Court. At AL's death, Davis was executor of his estate. (Dictionary of American Biography; National Cyclopedia of American Biography)

Davis, James (ca. 1807-?).

An acquaintance of AL in New Salem, Davis was at various times a farmer, teamster, and "grocery clerk" in Petersburg and Menard County. (Federal Census, Menard County, 1850, 1860, 1880)

Defrees, John D. (1810-82).

An Indianapolis lawyer, editor, and politician, DeFrees managed Edward Bates's 1860 campaign in Indiana. A former chairman of the Whig and Republican parties in his home state, he was appointed government printer by AL, an office he held until 1869. (William Wesley Woollen, Biographical and Historical Sketches of Early Indiana [Indianapolis, 1883])

Dickey, Theophilus Lyle (1811-85).

A Kentuckian who settled and practiced law in western Illinois, Dickey was elected judge of the Ninth Circuit in 1848, an office he held for four years. A delegate to the first Republican convention in Illinois in 1854, he ran for Congress as an Independent in 1856 and supported Douglas in 1858 and 1860. (Dictionary of American Biography)

Dickson, William M. (1827-89).

A graduate of Miami University, Dickson practiced law in Kentucky and then in Cincinnati, where in 1852 he married a cousin of MTL. A friend of AL, during the Civil War he spent much time in Washington, D.C. (George Irving Reed, comp., The Bench and Bar of Ohio: A Compendium of History and Biography [Chicago, 1897])

Donnohue, Dillard C. (ca. 1815-98).

A member of the Putnam County, Indiana, bar, Donnohue also served as mayor of Greencastle. (Jesse Weik, Weik's History of Putnam County, Indiana [Indianapolis, 1910]; Federal Census, Putnam County, 1860; IDRPC)

Dougherty, John R. (1824-1904).

Born in Spencer County, Indiana, Dougherty began flatboating between Rockport, Indiana, and New Orleans at the age of sixteen. In 1849 he became owner and manager of a wharf boat in Rockport, shipping grain and produce. He was active in local politics. (HWSP; Rockport [Ind.] Journal Weekly, September 2, 1904)

Dresser, Thomas W. (1837-1907).

Dresser's father, Charles, married AL and Mary Todd in 1842. At the outbreak of

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the Civil War the Virginia-born Dresser volunteered to serve the Confederacy. He was captured and in December 1862 returned to Springfield, where he had been raised. Completing a medical degree in New York, he began a practice in Springfield in 1864 and attended MTL in her final illness. (Wallace; History of Sagamon County; Illinois State Journal, April 28, 1907)

Dubois, Jesse K. (1811-76).

Born in Lawrence County, Illinois, Dubois attended college at Bloomington, Indiana. In 1834 he was elected to the Illinois General Assembly with AL and was re-elected for three more terms. At the first Republican state convention in 1856 he was nominated for state auditor on AL's recommendation and served two terms. He remained active in Republican politics, and though a disappointed federal officeseeker, he was an early supporter of AL's re-election in 1864. (Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois)

Dummer, Henry Enoch (1808-78).

Dummer emigrated from New England to Springfield, where from 1833 to 1837 he preceded AL as the partner of John T. Stuart. During this partnership, AL borrowed law books from the firm's library. (HEI/Sangamon 1:606; Paul M. Angle, "The Record of a Friendship: A Series of Letters from Lincoln to Henry E. Dummer," JISHS 31 [1938])

Duncan, Jason (1799-1885).

A native of Vermont, Duncan moved west in the 1820s, receiving his medical degree in Missouri. He arrived in New Salem about the same time as AL and lived at James Rutledge's tavern, where he set up his medical practice. Duncan left in 1834 and a short time later married a New Salem girl, Nancy Burner. (Knox County Republican, September 20, 1885)

Duncan, John (1804-?).

Duncan was a minister in LaRue County, Kentucky, in the 1860s. (Louis A. Warren, Lincoln's Parentage and Childhood [New York, 1926])

Eastman, Zebina (1815-83).

In 1839 Eastman joined Benjamin Lundy at Hennepin, Illinois, in publishing the antislavery newspaper Genius of Universal Emancipation. In 1840, with Hooper Warren, he began publication of The Genius of Liberty, moving that paper to Chicago in 1842, where it ultimately merged with the Chicago Tribune. In 1861 Eastman was appointed by AL as U.S. consul at Bristol, England. (BEI; HEI)

Eddy, Francis Marshall (1842-1909).

The son of Henry Eddy, a longtime lawyer and editor in Shawneetown, Illinois, Eddy lived most of his life in Gallatin County. (Glen Miner, comp., Gallatin County, Illinois, Cemeteries [Thomson, Ill., 1973])

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Edwards, Elizabeth Todd (1813-88).

Elizabeth Todd was born into a wealthy and aristocratic Kentucky family and, in 1832, married into another. In 1835 she and her husband, Ninian W. Edwards, moved to Springfield, and in 1839 she invited her younger sister Mary to live with her. Cultured and charming, Elizabeth Edwards was Springfield's leading hostess whose home was the resort of the city's socially and politically ambitious young men. There AL and Mary Todd met and courted, and there, in spite of the Edwards's active discouragement of the match, they were married on November 4, 1842. Elizabeth Edwards visited the Lincolns in the White House, where MTL became resentful toward her and actively sought her husband's dismissal from his federal post. In her later years, MTL sought refuge in her sister's Springfield home, and it was there that she died in 1882. (ISJ, February 23, 1888; DAB; ALE; O. H. Browning to N. W. Edwards, May 26, 1865, Chicago Historical Society.)

Edwards, Ninian Wirt (1809-89).

The son of the Illinois territorial governor Ninian Edwards and brother-in-law of MTL, Edwards graduated from the law department of Transylvania University. He served briefly as Illinois attorney general in 1834, later becoming a Springfield merchant. He also served with AL in the Illinois General Assembly (1836-40). In 1839 Mary Todd came to live in the Edwards's Springfield home, where she met and eventually married AL. In 1852 Edwards, to the mortification of AL, left the Whig party to become a Democrat, and during AL's campaigns of 1858 and 1860 was a supporter of Stephen A. Douglas. As Illinois's first superintendent of public instruction, he secured passage of a school law that laid the foundation for the state school system. Though politically at odds with his brother-in-law, Edwards prevailed upon AL in 1861 to give him a lucrative federal office — captain and commissary of subsistence — but pressure from critics and the connivance of MTL led to his removal two years later. (DAB; ALE; O. H. Browning to N. W. Edwards, May 26, 1865, Chicago Historical Society)

Eisenmayer, George C. (1820-93).

Eisenmayer was a Bavarian immigrant to St. Clair County, Illinois, who farmed near Mascoutah and was an early vintner there. (letter from Mary McMillon Sauerhage, July 27, 1994; letter from Elfred M. Worms, August 24, 1994; History of St. Clair County [Philadelphia, 1881])

Elliott, Wesley (1822-97).

The son of a pioneer Springfield tavernkeeper, Elliot farmed in Menard County, then participated in the Pike's Peak gold rush and remained in the Far West for several years. (Power; ISJ, January 24, 1897)

Ellis, Abner Y. (1807-78).

Ellis moved from Kentucky to Sangamon County in 1825 and had a long involve

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ment in the mercantile business in New Salem and Springfield. Ellis's father was in business with WHH's father, Archer G. Herndon, and Ellis himself was at one time associated in merchandising with AL's closest Springfield friend, Joshua F. Speed. In 1849 Ellis was appointed postmaster at Springfield. (Power; letter from Marie T. Eberle, August 25, 1993; letter from Deanna Kohlburn, September 8, 1993)

Elmore, Hardin H. (1813-1902).

Born in Cumberland County, Kentucky, Elmore settled in Sangamon County in September 1834, in what later became Loami Township. (Power; ISJ, September 20, 1902)

Elmore, Travis (1820-88).

Travis Elmore knew AL at New Salem and his father served in AL's company in the Black Hawk War. (Whitney; Federal Census, Menard County, 1850; tombstone at Oakland Cemetery, Petersburg, Ill.)

Emerson, Ira (1823-98).

A pioneer preacher, Emerson was the Methodist minister in charge at Pleasant Plains, Illinois, in 1866 when he was approached by Ben Irwin in WHH's behalf. (ISJ, May 5, 1898)

Engle, William (1801-70).

A native of Virginia, Engle came to Illinois in 1823 and was a farmer, merchant, and politician. He represented Menard County in the General Assembly but was best known locally as a storyteller. (Onstot; letters from James E. Remer, March 3 and December 1, 1992)

Enos, Pascal P., Jr. (1816-67).

Educated in St. Louis and Jacksonville, Enos began his business career as a clerk in Springfield. Politically active as a Whig and then a Republican, he was elected to the State legislature and later was appointed clerk of the U.S. Circuit Court by Justices John McLean and David Davis. (Wallace; HEI)

Fell, Jesse W. (1808-87).

Pennsylvania-born Fell was the first lawyer in Bloomington, Illinois. In the winter of 1834-35 he began a long political association with AL. He worked hard in 1860 to gain the Republican presidential nomination for AL, having previously solicited a brief autobiography from AL and circulated it among Eastern voters. (ALE)

Ficklin, Orlando Bell (1808-86).

Ficklin was born in Kentucky, studied law in Missouri, and settled in Illinois in 1830, first in Mount Carmel and later in Charleston. He served with AL in both

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the Illinois and U.S. House of Representatives. A Whig turned Democrat, Ficklin was often associated with AL in the trial of cases in the Illinois circuit courts. (ALE)

Fisk, John Moore (1822-1918).

Fisk was a neighbor of WHH when the latter was farming north of Springfield after the Civil War. (HSC; Floyd S. Barringer, comp., Sangamon County Cemeteries, vol. 2 [Springfield, Ill., 1971])

Francis, Eliza Rumsey (1793-1893).

Francis moved in 1831 with her husband, Simeon, to Springfield, where he published the Sangamo Journal, a Whig paper. Simeon Francis was closely associated with AL in politics, and Eliza Francis is said to have encouraged the reconciliation between AL and Mary Todd. (Portland Oregonian, May 1, 1893; letter from Sandy McGuire, June 26, 1994)

Friend, Charles (1841-1922).

Friend was supposedly the grandson of Dennis Hanks's father and the postmaster at Sonora, Kentucky. (Daniel E. McClure, Jr., Two Centuries in Elizabethtown and Hardin County, Kentucky [Elizabethtown, 1979]; James Allison Jones and Mary Josephine Jones, comps., Cemetery Inscriptions, Hardin County, Kentucky [Owensboro, Ky., 1987])

Gentry, Anna Caroline Roby (1807-83).

Anna Gentry was the daughter of Absalom Roby and the wife of Allen Gentry, with whom AL made his 1828 flatboat trip from Rockport, Indiana, to New Orleans. (History of Warrick, Spencer, and Perry Counties, Indiana; Rockport [Ind.] Journal, January 28, 1970; Gentry file, LBNM)

Gillespie, Joseph (1809-85).

A special legal and political friend of AL whose acquaintance dated from the Black Hawk War, Gillespie observed AL for more than thirty years and served with him in a variety of capacities. A protégé of Cyrus Edwards in Edwardsville, he attended Transylvania University at Edwards's urging and studied law with him before his admission to the Illinois bar in 1836. Gillespie served in the General Assembly in 1840-41 and 1846-58, practiced law in Madison County, and between 1861 and 1873 was judge of the Twenty-fourth Circuit. Gillespie and AL were associated professionally through their Supreme Court practice, and they were both involved in the promotion of the Republican party in Illinois. His political pilgrimage from Whig to Republican, aside from his Know-Nothing interlude in the mid-1850s, was very similar to AL's. Gillespie was of particular service to AL in the senatorial campaign of 1858, and AL attested that their relationship was one of complete trust. (Frederic B. Crossley, Courts and Lawyers of Illinois [Chicago, 1916]; HEI)

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Godbey, Russell (1800-88).

Godbey came to Menard County from Virginia in 1830 and shortly thereafter employed AL to resurvey his lands. Though an active supporter of the Democratic party, during the Civil War he was strongly in favor of the maintenance of the Union. (IAMM)

Goodpasture, Abraham H. (1812-85).

A native of Tennessee and a minister for a half century, Goodpasture was licensed to preach in 1835. Moving to Illinois sometime before 1850, he became a member of the Sangamon Presbytery and pastor at Concord Cumberland Presbyterian Church near Petersburg in Menard County. (letters from Mrs. Burl E. [Genevieve] Goodpasture, August 8 and 15, 1992)

Goodrich, Grant (1811-89).

Born and raised in New York State, Goodrich studied law there and in 1834 moved to Chicago, where he was associated with AL in practice before the federal courts. (Chicago Tribune, March 16, 1889; HEI; BEI)

Gourley, James (ca. 1810-76).

A native of Pennsylvania and a boot- and shoemaker who had known AL from the 1830s, Gourley was for many years a near neighbor of the Lincolns in Springfield, living one block east of them. Gourley served as deputy sheriff of Sangamon County and was also a deputy U.S. marshal. (Federal Census, Sangamon County, 1850, 1860; HSC; A. S. Edwards to Jesse Weik, June 15, 1915, Weik Papers, ISHL; Spgfld 55-56)

Graham, William Mentor (1800-1886).

Graham was born in Kentucky but moved to Illinois in 1826, where he lived and taught school near New Salem. He attracted attention by claiming after AL's death that AL had been one of his pupils. This was disputed by some former residents and appears doubtful, though there is testimony that he helped AL in studying grammar and surveying. During the Civil War, Graham, a converted Democrat, was a sturdy supporter of the Union cause. (ALE)

Greene, Johnson Gaines (1820-85).

Greene, a younger brother of Lynn McNulty ("Nult") Greene and William Graham ("Bill") Greene, was one year old when his family migrated to Illinois from Tennessee. An adolescent during AL's stay at New Salem, he later became a successful Menard County farmer and livestock dealer. (CG; IAMM; Onstot)

Greene, Lynn Mcnulty (1814-82).

The brother of William Graham and Johnson Gaines Greene, "Nult" Greene attended Illinois College at Jacksonville in the 1830s. In 1840 he married Nancy

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Owens Abell, the daughter of Bennett and Elizabeth Abell and the niece of Mary Owens Vineyard. (CG; Walsh; Onstot)

Greene, William Graham (1812-94).

Greene's family moved from Tennessee to what became Menard County, Illinois, when he was nine. In 1831 he was AL's helper in Denton Offutt's store at New Salem, marking the beginning of a lifelong friendship. "Bill" Greene was a member of the volunteer militia that chose AL as their captain for the Black Hawk War. He attended Illinois College at Jacksonville from 1833 to 1836. After college Greene left Illinois to teach briefly in Kentucky and Tennessee and to pursue business ventures in Mississippi and Memphis. Returning to Illinois in 1845, he engaged in farming, stock dealing, banking, and railroad development, earning the reputation for sharp business practices and becoming one of the wealthiest men in the area. During his presidency, AL appointed Greene collector of internal revenue in his district. WHH suspected Greene of exaggerating his knowledge of AL. (CG; BEI; HMMC)

Grigsby, Nathaniel (1811-90).

Grigsby's family moved from Kentucky to Spencer County, Indiana, just before the Lincolns and were their close neighbors. AL and Nathaniel Grigsby grew up and went to school together, and Grigsby's brother Aaron married AL's sister Sarah. Grigsby remained in touch with AL long after the latter left Indiana. An early Republican and a AL supporter in 1860, Grigsby enlisted with four of his sons in the Tenth Indiana Cavalry in 1863. (Grigsby biography, Grigsby Vertical File, and Family Tree Information, Grigsby's Declaration for Original Invalid Pension, LBNM; Elizabeth N. Nicholson, ed., Memorabilia: The Grigsby Family, 1779-1979 [Chestnut Hill, Mass., 1979])

Grimes, James Wilson (1816-72).

One of Iowa's premier politicians for more than thirty years, Grimes served in the territorial and state legislatures of Iowa and was its governor from 1854 to 1858. He also served in the U.S. Senate for ten years (1859-69) and was one of the seven Republican senators who voted "not guilty" at the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. (DAB; BDAC)

Grimshaw, Jackson (1820-75).

A Quincy attorney, Grimshaw was a delegate to the Republican convention in Bloomington in 1856. An unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 1856 and 1858, he was appointed in 1865 by AL as collector of internal revenue for the Quincy District. (HEI)

Hall, James (1802-89).

Hall, a physician born and educated in New England, later relocated to Baltimore and became deeply involved in the colonization of blacks to Africa. Before the Civil

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War he was an agent of the Maryland State Colonization Society and a director of the American Colonization Society. (Baltimore Sun, September 4, 1889)

Hall, John Johnston (1829-1909).

Hall was the son of Matilda Johnston and Squire Hall, his mother being AL's stepsister. After the death of Thomas Lincoln in 1851, Hall purchased the Lincoln property, where he and his family resided with Lincoln's widow. (Coleman; Portrait and Biographical Record of Coles County, Illinois. PBRCC)

Hanks, Dennis F. (1799-1893).

A first cousin of AL's mother (see the appendix) and ten years AL's senior, Hanks was a close friend during AL's boyhood in Kentucky and Indiana. When AL's mother and Hanks's foster parents died of "milk sickness" in 1818, he joined the Lincoln household in Spencer County, Indiana, and lived there until his marriage to Sarah Elizabeth Johnston, daughter of Thomas Lincoln's second wife, in 1821. Hanks continued to live in the Lincoln neighborhood until the two families removed to Illinois in 1830. His daughter Harriet lived with AL's family in Springfield in the 1840s to better her education. After the 1864 draft riot at Charleston, Illinois, Hanks was sent to Washington, D.C., on behalf of some of the arrested rioters. Though sixty-six when WHH began to question him, and suspected of exaggerating his role in AL's life, Hanks had closer sustained personal contact with AL during his formative years than any other informant. (HEI; ALE)

Hanks, John (1802-89).

Hanks was born in Nelson County, Kentucky, and was a first cousin of AL's mother, Nancy Hanks (see the appendix). He lived for four years with the Lincoln family in the 1820s in Spencer County, Indiana, where he worked with AL on Thomas Lincoln's farm. Hanks later moved to Macon County, Illinois, and partly on his advice Thomas Lincoln moved there with his family in March 1830. Hanks was involved with AL in Denton Offutt's flatboat expedition to New Orleans in 1831, and the next year he was in the Black Hawk War. Thereafter, he farmed in Macon County, mined in California for three years after 1850, and, though almost sixty at the outbreak of the Civil War, enlisted in the Twenty-first Illinois Regiment. His identification in 1860 of some rails split by AL led to the latter's being called "the railsplitter" in the presidential campaign. WHH believed that AL had a high regard for this member of his family. (Decatur Republican, July 2, 1889; ALE)

Hanna, William H. (1823-70).

Born in Indiana and trained as a lawyer there, Hanna came to Illinois in 1849 and established a law practice in Bloomington, where he had frequent contact with AL. ("Wm. H. Hanna Bulletin, March 25, 1906," Dwight E. Frink Collection, McLean County Historical Society, Bloomington, Ill.)

Harding, Jacob (1802-83).

A native of Virginia, Harding lived in Tennessee for several years before moving

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to Paris, Illinois, in about 1837. There he established the Prairie Beacon in 1848 and served as editor until shortly before 1861. (letter from Terence A. Tanner, January 6, 1992; inventory of Jacob Harding Papers, ISHL)

Harriott, James (1810-69).

A New Jersey native, Harriott served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1844 to 1846. After moving to Pekin, he was elected judge of the Twenty-first Judicial Circuit and presided at the 1858 murder trial of William "Duff" Armstrong. (letters from Loree Bergerhouse, July 11 and August 30, [1993)

Harris, John Thomas (1823-99).

An attorney in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Harris held county offices and served as a Democratic presidential elector in 1856 and a member of Congress in 1859-61 and 1871-81. (Biographical Directory of the American Congress. BDAC)

Harrison, George M. (1813-73).

Born in Rockingham County, Virginia, Harrison came to Sangamon County with his parents in 1822. During the Black Hawk War he served with AL in a spy company and made the journey home to Sangamon County with him. Harrison later studied medicine in Springfield under Dr. Jacob M. Early and graduated in April 1840 from Rush Medical College in Pennsylvania, the second graduate of a medical college from Sangamon County. (HSC; Power; ISJ, September 3, 1873)

Hart, Charles Henry (1847-1918).

A young Philadelphia law student, Hart was an AL enthusiast and WHH correspondent whose parents had visited AL in the White House. (DAB)

Hay, John Milton (1838-1905).

AL's secretary and biographer, Hay was raised in Warsaw, Illinois, and studied at Brown University. In Springfield to read law with his uncle, Milton Hay, he renewed an earlier friendship with John G. Nicolay and first met AL. When Nicolay was chosen the president-elect's secretary, Hay was named his assistant. In the White House, Hay screened visitors, read mail, prepared a daily news summary, and acted as a messenger. He also kept a diary, now an important source on the workings of AL's administration. In March 1865 Hay was appointed secretary of legation in Paris, later serving in various foreign posts. In the early 1870s, with the blessing and cooperation of Robert Todd Lincoln, Hay and Nicolay began collaborating on a massive biography of AL. (ALE; DAB)

Hay, Milton (1817-93).

Hay was a law student of John T. Stuart and AL in Springfield and later practiced with Stephen T. Logan, who became his father-in-law. AL secretary and biographer John Hay was his nephew. (HEI)

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Haycraft, Presley Nevil (1797-1884).

The brother of the Kentucky informant and local historian Samuel Haycraft, Presley Nevil Haycraft knew AL's parents as a child. (The Jess M. Thompson Pike County History [Pittsfield, Ill., 1951])

Haycraft, Samuel (1795-1878).

A native of Hardin County and Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Haycraft began his public career at the age of fourteen in the office of the county and circuit clerk. In 1816 he was appointed clerk of the circuit and county courts and held this office until 1851. Thereafter he alternated between the practice of law and the holding of county and state offices. As a youth he had known Thomas Lincoln in Hardin County, and on the strength of this connection and his standing as a local historian, Haycraft corresponded with AL about his family in 1860. Though Kentucky was bitterly divided during the Civil War, Haycraft remained a loyal supporter of the Union. (BEK)

Helm, Emilie Todd (1836-1930).

Emilie Helm, a half-sister of MTL, was the daughter of Robert S. Todd and his second wife, Elizabeth Humphreys. She married Ben Hardin Helm, who became acquainted with AL and was later a Confederate general. She remained a Southern sympathizer, though she visited her half-sister in the White House after her husband's death at Chickamauga in 1863. (R. Gerald McMurtry, Ben Hardin Helm [Chicago, 1943]; Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln [New York, 1987])

Helm, John B. (1797-1872).

Helm was born in Kentucky, where he studied law and operated a store in Elizabethtown. Later he practiced law and held appointive offices, being politically a states' rights Democrat. In 1852 he moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where he became interested in real estate development, practiced law, and was elected judge of the Court of Common Pleas. (History of Marion County, Missouri [Belmont, Calif., 1979])

Herndon, Anna Miles (1836-93).

Anna Miles was the daughter of G. U. Miles, a Menard County pioneer and early political associate of AL. The second wife of WHH, she was the mother of two of his children. (ISJ, January 8, 1893)

Herndon, Archer Gray (1795-1867).

The father of WHH, Archer Herndon was an early settler in Sangamon County, arriving in 1821 and afterward becoming a successful merchant and tavernkeeper in Springfield. He served in the state senate 1834-42 and was, with AL, one of the famous "Long Nine" from Sangamon County. (HEI; Power)

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Herndon, Elliot B. (1820-95).

Brother to WHH and son of Archer Herndon, Elliot Herndon was a Democrat and lawyer who served as Springfield city attorney, Sangamon County attorney, and U.S. district attorney under President Buchanan. He also edited the Illinois State Democrat in Springfield during the Buchanan administration. (HSC; Power)

Herndon, James A. (1813-?).

A cousin of WHH, James Herndon knew AL in New Salem, where he kept store briefly in 1832 with his brother J. Rowan Herndon. James Herndon later moved to Columbus in Adams County and still later to Quincy, working as a painter, butcher, and harnessmaker. (Reep, 117; Federal Census, Adams County, 1850, 1860; Quincy; letter from Wayne Temple, September 6, 1994)

Herndon, John Rowan (ca. 1806-?).

"Row" Herndon was a brother of James A. Herndon and a cousin of WHH. With his brother he operated a general store in New Salem in 1832 before selling his interest to AL. Herndon left New Salem in 1833 following the death of his first wife, who was killed by a gun he accidentally discharged. He moved first to Island Grove in Sangamon County; by 1840 he was living in Adams County, Illinois, at Columbus, where he was a butcher, operated a small farm, and apparently also served as a constable. (Benjamin P. Thomas, Lincoln's New Salem [Springfield, Ill., 1934]; Federal Census, Adams County, 1840, 1850, 1860; Quincy; letter from Wayne Temple, September 6, 1994)

Herndon, Rebecca Day Johnson (1790-1875).

A native of Virginia, the mother of WHH was a young widow when she married Archer Herndon in Kentucky in 1816. Four years later she accompanied him with their growing family to Illinois. (Power; burial record card, Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Ill.)

Hewitt, Virgil (1840-98).

A Confederate veteran, Hewitt was elected county clerk of Hardin County, Kentucky, in 1866. (H. A. Sommers, History of Elizabethtown, 1869-1921 [Owensboro, Ky., 1981])

Hickox, Virgil (1806-81).

Longtime chairman of the Illinois Democratic Central Committee, Hickox was a personal and political friend of Stephen A. Douglas. In 1851 he and a group of businessmen undertook the construction of a railroad from Alton to Springfield, later promoting its Chicago extension. (Power; Wallace)

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Hill, John (1839-98).

Hill was born in New Salem, the son of Parthena Nance and Samuel Hill, the leading New Salem merchant and a close friend of AL. As editor of a Democratic Petersburg newspaper, John Hill vigorously supported Douglas in the 1858 senatorial and the 1860 presidential campaigns. During the Civil War he was the commissioner from the Illinois state government to Illinois regiments. Later he was elected to the General Assembly, and in 1872 he moved to Georgia. (letter from Rosella H. Rogers, February 28, 1991; NMB; Onstot)

Hill, Parthena Nance (1816-98).

Parthena Nance came to Illinois with her parents from Green County, Kentucky, in 1832 and settled near New Salem. In 1835 she married Samuel Hill, a New Salem storekeeper and friend of AL. The Hills moved from the dying New Salem in 1839 to Petersburg, where Samuel died in 1857. (NMB; Family Notes by Parthena Nance Hill, October 1895, Nance Collaterals Papers, Lincoln Library, Springfield, Ill.)

Hoagland, H. H. (1839-1905).

Hoagland was born in Morgan County and moved to Petersburg in 1857. He attended Jubilee and Lombard Colleges. In 1871 he was admitted to the Illinois bar and practiced law until 1882, when he was elected county judge. (Petersburg Observer, May 20, 1905)

Hohimer, Henry (1805-89).

Hohimer's family lived in the New Salem area, and his brother served under AL in the Black Hawk War. (letters from Margaret Hohimer, April 30 and May 15, 1991)

Holland, Josiah Gilbert (1819-81).

Holland practiced medicine briefly and taught school but finally settled on literary pursuits. From 1850 to 1866 he was associated with the Springfield (Mass.) Republican. In 1869 Holland helped to establish Scribner's Monthly (later renamed Century Magazine), which he edited until his death. His admiring biography of AL, the first to be substantially researched, was published in 1866. (DAB)

Houghland, John S. (ca. 1825-72).

Houghland was a physician who practiced in Spencer County, Indiana, and the surrounding counties. (Rockport [Ind.] Democrat, October 12, 1872)

Howard, Jacob Merritt (1805-71).

A leading Michigan politician for more than three decades, Howard was one of the prime movers in organizing the Republican party. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1862, and as a Radical leader he played a prime role in drafting the Thirteenth Amendment and other significant pieces of Reconstruction legislation. (Dictionary of American Biography)

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Iles, Elijah (1796-1883).

Iles was one of Springfield's earliest pioneers and the proprietor of its first store in 1821. A shrewd and highly successful businessman, he profited from extensive early land acquisitions. He served in both the Winnebago War of 1827 and the Black Hawk War of 1832. (Power; HEI)

Irwin, Benjamin F. (1822-1902).

Irwin, a Republican and minor public official living at Pleasant Plains, helped WHH identify and locate Lincoln-era informants in Sangamon and Menard Counties. (Power; Federal Census, Sangamon County, 1850, 1870; Walsh; letter from Mark D. Irwin, July 15, 1992)

Jayne, William (1826-1916).

Jayne was the son of Springfield's first physician, Gershom Jayne, and the younger brother of Mary Todd's close friend Julia Jayne. He was born in Springfield, educated at Illinois College, then received his medical degree from the Medical College of the University of Missouri in 1849. He returned to Springfield to practice, serving as AL's family physician. A Free-Soil Whig who turned Republican, Jayne was elected mayor of Springfield in 1859 and to the Illinois Senate a year later. AL appointed Jayne to be the first governor of Dakota Territory in 1861, and Jayne later won a contested election to represent Dakota in Congress as its territorial delegate. He returned to his Springfield medical practice in 1864. (Power; BDATG)

Jenkins, John T. (1818-83).

A Maryland native, Jenkins served several terms as county clerk of Logan County, Illinois, between 1850 and 1883. (History of Logan County, Illinois [Chicago, 1886]; Logan County Cemetery inscriptions)

Johnson, [?].

This unidentified informant from "Egypt" was apparently a delegate from southern Illinois to the Illinois Republican state convention in 1860. Neither of the Johnsons listed at the convention, from Clark and Henry Counties, would appear to be this Johnson. (ISJ, May 12, 1860)

Johnson, S. T. (ca. 1831-?).

A resident of Spencer County, Indiana, in 1865.

Johnston, Thomas Lincoln Davis (1837-?).

A son of AL's stepbrother John D. Johnston and a grandson of Sarah Bush Lincoln, Johnston was frequently in trouble with the law. In 1856 and 1857 AL assisted him when he was charged with petty larceny. Johnston's legal difficulties continued after the Civil War. (Coleman)

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Jonas, Annie E. (1842-1926).

Jonas was originally from Quincy, Illinois, where her father, Abraham Jonas, was AL's friend. She later married an Episcopal clergyman and moved to Minneapolis. (City of Minneapolis, Division of Public Health — Vital Statistics, death certificate; Minneapolis Journal, February 20, 1896)

Jones, John A. (1815-99).

"Fiddler" Jones was the brother of Hannah Armstrong. He served with AL in the Black Hawk War, later moving to Madison County, Iowa. (Walsh; letter from Lorraine Kile, August 11, 1994)

Judd, Norman B. (1815-78).

A close political associate of AL, Judd used his position on the Republican National Committee to bring to Chicago the convention that nominated AL for president in 1860. He traveled to Washington, D.C., with AL in February 1861 and was appointed minister to Prussia, where he served for four years. He later served two terms in Congress. (ALE; DAB)

Kelly, Joseph J. (1826-1904).

A lawyer in DeWitt County, Illinois, Kelly served from 1860 to 1868 as clerk of the DeWitt County Circuit Court. (History of DeWitt County, Illinois [Chicago, 1910]; pension files, National Archives, Washington, D.C.)

Kercheval, Samuel Edward (1847-1910).

Kercheval was a longtime politician in Spencer County, Indiana. (American Biographical History of Eminent and Self-Made Men of the State of Indiana [Cincinnati, 1880]; Rockport [Ind.] Journal, December 23, 1910)

Keyes, James W. (ca. 1806-88).

Keyes, who came to Illinois from Virginia, was a tailor in Springfield in 1850 and later a Sangamon County farmer. (Federal Census, Sangamon County, 1850, 1860, 1870; ISJ, May 20, 1888)

King, Franklin T..

A merchant and physician in Springfield and later McLean, Illinois, King was a brother of Turner R. King, another WHH informant. (Bailey and Hair, comps., A Gazetteer of McLean County [Chicago, 1866])

King, Turner R. (1812-88).

Born in Sutton, Massachusetts, King came to Springfield in 1840. At Congressman Lincoln's urging, King was appointed register of the Springfield Land Office by President Zachary Taylor, and in 1862 AL appointed him U.S. collector for the Eighth Congressional District. (Power; letter from Joy Craig, October 23, 1993)

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Kirk, Andrew St. Clair (1822-99).

Kirk was a Kentuckian who was raised in Sangamon County, Illinois, and spent most of his life farming near Athens in Menard County. (Power; Illustrated Atlas Map of Menard County, Illinois. IAMM; Illinois State Register, January 15, 1899)

Klein, John.

A John Kline served in Captain Levi Goodan's company of General Samuel Whiteside's brigade of mounted volunteers during the Black Hawk War, enlisting at Springfield. (Whitney)

Kyle, John Glover (1840-87).

Kyle, who was educated at Centre College, Transylvania University, and the Louisville Law School, practiced in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. (Perrin; BEK; Cemetery Records, Mercer County, Kentucky, 1969-89 [Harrodsburg, Ky., 1989])

Lamar, John Wesley (1822-1903).

Born in Spencer County, Indiana, Lamar received his education in the same log schoolhouse AL once attended. A farmer and political officeholder, he was a member of the Fifty-third Indiana Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. (letter from Jean Stevens Wiggin, March 25, 1992)

Lamon, Ward Hill (1828-93).

A Danville attorney and an associate of AL on the Eighth Circuit, Lamon was called by AL "my particular friend." He accompanied the president-elect to Washington, D.C., in 1861 and was appointed U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia. Though much criticized for his conduct, he was a trusted member of AL's inner circle. In 1872, together with Chauncey F. Black, Lamon published a controversial biography of AL based on research material collected by and purchased from WHH. (ALE; DAB)

Lawrence, Richard M. (1827-?).

Of Tennessee birth and a Democrat, Lawrence conducted a general merchandise business in Williamsville, Illinois, in Sangamon County. He also served as postmaster of that town. (HSC)

Lightfoot, John A. (1814-?).

Lightfoot was born in Kentucky and moved with his parents to Sangamon County in 1830. After the Civil War he was employed in the U.S. Custom House in New Orleans. (Power)

Lincoln, Mary Todd (1818-82).

Born in Lexington, Kentucky, of an aristocratic family and well educated, Mary Todd left home in 1839 to live in Springfield with her sister Elizabeth (Mrs. Ninian

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W. Edwards). After a troubled engagement that was interrupted for a year and a half, she married AL on November 4, 1842. Though a devoted wife and mother, MTL had a volatile personality and a hot temper. Many of AL's friends, including WHH, considered AL's domestic life unhappy, but WHH also insisted that he sympathized with MTL because, as he told his collaborator, the "domestic hell of Lincoln's life is not all on one side." MTL's undisguised ambition for her husband was credited by some of these same friends as an important ingredient in his political success. During AL's presidency, MTL gave special attention to White House social affairs but was widely resented for her extravagance, her Southern background, and for meddling in affairs of state. Divided loyalties within her own family and particularly the death of her son Willie contributed to her emotional instability, which, following AL's assassination, became pronounced. In 1875 she was judged incompetent and briefly committed to a sanitarium in Batavia, Illinois. She died in Springfield at the home of her sister Elizabeth. (Dictionary of American Biography; WHH to JWW, January 9, 1886, in Hertz)

Lincoln, Robert Todd (1843-1926).

The eldest child of AL and MTL, Robert Lincoln graduated from Harvard in 1864, studied law briefly, and then served on the staff of General Ulysses S. Grant. In 1867 he was admitted to the bar in Illinois, and in 1868 he married Mary Harlan, the daughter of U.S. Senator James Harlan from Iowa. Robert disliked and distrusted WHH and disapproved of his biographical project, particularly WHH's probing of AL's rude beginnings and his private life. Secretary of war under Presidents Garfield and Arthur and minister to England under Benjamin Harrison, he became wealthy in later life as president and then chairman of the board of the Pullman Company. (DAB)

Lincoln, Sarah Bush Johnston (1788-1869).

Sarah Bush had three children by her first husband, Daniel Johnston: Sarah Elizabeth, who married Dennis Hanks; Matilda, who married Squire Hall and later Reuben Moore; and John Davis Johnston. After the death of AL's mother, Thomas Lincoln returned to Kentucky in 1819 and proposed to the widowed Sarah Johnston. After paying her debts, he married her and brought her to Indiana, where she reformed the Lincoln household and proved a kind and affectionate stepmother to the Lincoln children. AL seems to have been genuinely attached to her from the beginning and was more solicitous for her welfare than for that of his father. After Thomas Lincoln's death, Sarah Bush Lincoln lived with relatives, finally residing at the home of her daughter Matilda Moore in Coles County, where AL paid his last visit to her in 1861. (ALE)

Linder, Usher F. (1809-76).

Born in Kentucky, ten miles from the birthplace of AL, Linder came to Illinois in 1835. A lawyer, he served in the General Assembly with AL, as attorney general,

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and as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1860. He wrote a colorful memoir, Reminiscences of the Early Bench and Bar of Illinois, which was published after his death. (HEI)

Littlefield, John Harrison (1835-1902).

Littlefield entered the Lincoln-Herndon law office in 1858 as a student and campaigned for his mentor in 1860. In 1862 he was appointed to a clerkship in the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. After the war his painting of AL's deathbed scene and his later Lincoln portrait were widely circulated. (Daniel Trowbridge Mallett, comp., Mallett's Index of Artists [New York, 1948]; Harold Holzer, et al., The Lincoln Image [New York, 1984]; letter from Brian A. Williams, April 14, 1992)

Littler, David T. (1836-1902).

Littler studied law in Lincoln, Illinois, and was admitted to the bar in Logan County, on the Eighth Judicial Circuit. Later he moved to Springfield and became a law partner of Milton Hay. (HEI)

Lloyd, Bunbry B. (1816-76).

A prominent dentist in Springfield, Lloyd was born in Kentucky, removing to the Illinois capital in 1847 and residing there until shortly before his death. (ISJ, July 18, 1876; Spgfld 55-56)

Logan, Stephen Trigg (1800-1880).

Logan was educated in Kentucky and was not yet twenty-one when he was admitted to the practice of law there. Before moving to Springfield in 1832 he was a deputy circuit clerk and prosecuting attorney. In Illinois his talents were quickly recognized; he was elected circuit judge in 1835 and again in 1839 and also served four terms in the Illinois House. He was best known as a lawyer, however, enjoying an extensive trial and appellate practice and being an acknowledged leader of the Springfield bar. His law partnership with AL lasted from 1841 to 1844 and was apparently dissolved on friendly terms. Logan served as a delegate to the 1860 Republican convention that nominated AL; a year later he was a member of the Washington Peace Convention that met in an attempt to avoid the war. WHH had a poor opinion of Logan, who was apparently quite wary of WHH as a biographer of AL and told him surprisingly little. (ALE; DAB)

Long, James G. (1824-?).

A son of Kentucky immigrants to Illinois, Long served as sheriff of Menard County from 1848 to 1852 and held a clerkship in the Pension Office in Washington, D.C., when he responded to WHH's queries about government records. (Power)

Lord, A. F..

Lord was a citizen of Springfield and a client of AL and Herndon in 1859 or 1860.

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Matheny, James H. (1818-90).

Matheny grew up in Springfield, where his father held the important position of county clerk. At the age of fifteen he worked as a clerk in the Post Office and the office of the recorder, later serving as a court clerk. Matheny was one of the young men of the town who attached themselves to AL when he first came to Springfield and was a groomsman at AL's wedding in 1842. Like AL, he was an ardent Whig and an enthusiastic admirer of Henry Clay, even leading an expedition to Kentucky in 1840 to hear the great man speak. Admitted to the Illinois bar as a young man, Matheny was active in the courts of Sangamon and adjoining counties. Douglas charged in the 1858 debates that Matheny had acknowledged in a speech that AL and Trumbull conspired to "abolitionize" Illinois Whigs and Democrats, a charge that AL denied. In 1872 Matheny embarrassed WHH by publicly recanting, under pressure, some things he had once told WHH about AL's early religious beliefs. In 1873 he was elected county judge. (Power; History of Sangamon County. HSC; The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia; Donald)

Mather, Thomas Scott (1829-90).

Born in Connecticut, Mather served as adjutant general of Illinois from 1858 to 1861. During the Civil War he served as colonel of the Second Illinois Light Artillery, as chief of staff to General John A. McClernand, and as acting assistant inspector general of the Department of the Susquehanna. In 1865 he was breveted brigadier general. (Roger D. Hunt and Jack R. Brown, Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue [Gaithersburg, Md., 1990])

McDonald, Joseph Ewing (1819-91).

McDonald was a Democratic Indiana lawyer who occasionally practiced along with AL and other Eighth Circuit attorneys at Danville, Illinois. He also served as attorney general of Indiana and in the U.S. House and Senate. (DAB)

McHenry, Henry (1802-81).

McHenry came to the area of New Salem from Kentucky between 1825 and 1830 and married the sister of Jack Armstrong. He was a resident of Clary's Grove when AL first came to New Salem and may have been one of the Clary's Grove boys. He moved to Cass County and later to Petersburg, where he eventually became the owner of a hotel. AL appointed him provost marshal during the Civil War, in which role he earned a reputation for fearlessness in the unenviable job of apprehending army deserters in an area with strong Southern sympathies. (Power; HMMC; IAMM; CG; Reep)

McNamar, John (1801-79).

John McNamar, using the alias McNeil, was one of the first merchants at New Salem, engaging in a partnership with Samuel Hill in 1830. He sold out in 1832 to return to New York with the intention of bringing his parents to Illinois. McNamar and Ann Rutledge were engaged to be married, but in part because of his

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long delay in returning, Rutledge became engaged to AL. While living with her parents on a farm owned by McNamar, Ann Rutledge died shortly before his return from the East in 1835. McNamar was married by 1840 and lived in the area of New Salem for the rest of his life. (Federal Census, Menard County, 1840, 1850, 1860; Illustrated Atlas Map of Menard County; History of Menard and Mason Counties, Illinois; Walsh)

McNeely, Robert T. (1805-86).

McNeely lived in New Salem and then in rural Morgan and Menard Counties before moving to Petersburg to engage in the mercantile business. (HMMC; Miller; tombstone at Rose Hill Cemetery, Petersburg, Ill.)

McNeely, Thompson Ware (1835-1921).

A Petersburg lawyer, Menard County politician, and congressman, McNeely questioned some older Menard County residents, including his father, Robert T. McNeely, on WHH's behalf. (BDAC)

McPherson, Edward (1830-95).

A Pennsylvania newspaper editor, McPherson served two terms in Congress after 1859 and then was clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives until 1875. (BDAC)

Melvin, Samuel H. (1829-98).

At various times a druggist, banker, and railroad promoter in Springfield, Melvin also seems to have been involved in the 1873 controversy between WHH and Reverend James Reed over AL's religion. (United States Biographical Dictionary [Illinois]; Illinois State Journal. ISJ, February 12, 1898)

Miles, George Uriah (1796-1882).

Originally from Maryland, G. U. Miles came to Illinois Territory in 1816 and resided in several places before finally settling in Sangamon County in 1836. His daughter Anna became the second wife of WHH in 1862. Miles served as an agent for WHH in Menard County during 1865 and 1866, interviewing residents who had known AL and reporting his findings to WHH. (Miller; HMMC; IAMM)

Miles, James (1822-1913).

Miles was born in White County, Illinois, the son of George Uriah and Jane Miles. In 1840 he settled in Menard County where he engaged in farming and became friends with AL. Miles was a brother-in-law of WHH and a lifelong Democrat. (Petersburg Democrat, February 15, 1913; Miller; tombstone at Oakland Cemetery, Petersburg, Ill.)

Miles, John.

Possibly a relative of WHH's second wife, John Miles interviewed John Hanks for WHH. He was quartermaster of the Thirty-fifth Illinois Infantry during the Civil War. (History of Macon County from Its Organization to 1876 [Springfield, Ill., 1876])

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Miller, William.

A William Miller of Sangamon County commanded a battallion of the Fourth Regiment of the Third Brigade of Mounted Volunteers during the Black Hawk War. (Whitney)

Miner, Orlin H. (1825-79).

Shortly after moving to Illinois in the mid-1850s, Miner was appointed chief clerk in the state auditor's office by Auditor Jesse Dubois. He held this position until 1864, when he was elected to succeed Dubois. (HEI; HSC)

Minier, George W. (1813-1902).

A minister in the Christian Church, Minier served churches in and around the Eighth Judicial Circuit in central Illinois. (Portrait and Biographical Record of Tazewell and Mason Counties [Chicago, 1894]; Tazewell County, Illinois Cemeteries, (Pekin, Ill., 1982)

Monfort, Joseph G. (1810-1906).

After teaching in Ohio and attending Miami University, Monfort became a Presbyterian minister, serving in Ohio and Indiana. He also edited the Cincinnati Herald and Presbyter for nearly a half century. (History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio [Cincinnati, 1894]; Who Was Who in America)

Moore, Clifton H. (1817-86).

A DeWitt County lawyer, Moore was associated with AL on the Eighth Judicial Circuit and was a partner of Judge David Davis in real estate transactions. (John M. Palmer, The Bench and Bar of Illinois [Chicago, 1899]; HEI)

Moore, Isaac S. (1831-87).

One of the foremost lawyers of his time in southern Indiana, Moore went on to serve as a judge in Boonville, where he lived for the last twenty-five years of his life. (Dale [Ind.] Reporter, May 27, 1887; letter from Jean Stevens Wiggin, March 25, 1992)

Moore, Matilda Johnston Hall (1809-78).

Matilda Johnston was AL's stepsister and nearly his age. They lived in the same family circle from 1819 until her marriage to Squire Hall, a half-brother of Dennis Hanks, in 1826. After her husband's death she married Reuben Moore. She was living with her mother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, in Coles County, Illinois, at the time of AL's last visit in 1861. (Coleman; HCC)

Mosely, Robert (1815-86).

Mosely moved to Illinois from Kentucky in 1838. He maintained a mercantile business in Coles and Edgar Counties and was a Republican member of the Illinois House of Representatives from 1858 to 1860. (History of Edgar County, Illinois

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[Chicago, 1879]; Philip L. Shutt, comp., Edgar County, Illinois, Deaths and Some Burials [Paris, Ill., 1970])

Murphy, Lizzie.

No information was found on this informant.

Needham, Tim (1842-1918).

Needham reversed the usual immigrant path and moved with his parents from his Illinois birthplace to Hardin County, Kentucky, at an early age. He studied law in Elizabethtown and Louisville, began his practice in Elizabethtown, and later pursued careers in banking and journalism. (Perrin; E. Polk Johnson, History of Kentucky and Kentuckians [Chicago, 1912])

Nelson, Thomas Henry (1824-96).

Nelson was born in Kentucky and moved to Rockville, Indiana, where he commenced the study of law. First meeting AL in 1849, he relocated to Terre Haute in 1850 and established a successful law practice that sometimes brought him into contact with AL in eastern Illinois. As president, AL appointed Nelson minister to Chile. (DAB)

Nicolay, John G. (1832-1901).

Bavarian-born Nicolay left a Pittsfield, Illinois, newspaper in 1856 to work in Springfield in the office of the secretary of state. There he met AL and was appointed his private secretary after AL received the presidential nomination. After the war Nicolay served as consul in Paris and as marshal of the U.S. Supreme Court. He collaborated with John Hay on a ten-volume biography of AL. (DAB; ALE)

Oglesby, Richard James (1825-99).

Oglesby practiced law in Sullivan, Illinois, and went to the Illinois Senate as a Republican in 1860, resigning at the outbreak of the Civil War, from which he returned a wounded hero. In 1864 he was elected to his first term as governor of Illinois, during which Illinois ratified the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments and repealed its "Black Laws." Oglesby was elected governor twice more and also served in the U.S. Senate. (DAB; ALE)

Orendorff, Alfred (1845-1909).

An Illinois native, Orendorff served in the last year of the Civil War and in 1867 joined the law firm of Herndon and Zane. He continued in the firm after Zane and Herndon left. (Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 2-3 [1909]; Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society [1910])

Oskins, John (1820-70).

Oskins lived in Spencer County, Indiana, when AL did, and later in Perry County. Though younger than AL, Oskins professed to have attended school with him. (Oskins file, LBNM)

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Palmer, John Mcauley (1817-1900).

Originally a Douglas Democrat, Palmer broke with his party over the Kansas issue and became a Republican in 1856, presiding at the party's founding convention that year in Bloomington. He served in the Union army and later was an Illinois governor and U.S. senator. (Howard)

Pantier, David M. (1808-89).

Born in Ohio, Pantier moved with his family to Shawneetown, Illinois, in 1815 and then to what is now Menard County in 1826. He served in the Black Hawk War as a private in AL's company. (History of Menard and Mason Counties, Illinois)

Parks, Samuel C. (1812-1917).

Parks was born in Vermont and educated in Indiana. In the spring of 1840 he moved to Springfield, where he read law and became a friend of AL. After moving again to Lincoln, Illinois, he was associated with AL in many Logan County cases on the Eighth Judicial Circuit. Parks worked for AL's nomination at the Chicago convention in 1860, and in 1863 AL appointed him an associate justice of the supreme court of Idaho Territory. He is best remembered for his copy of Howells's campaign biography, in which AL marked certain errors in the margin. (Lawrence B. Stringer, History of Logan County, Ill. [Chicago, 1911]; William Dean Howells, Life of Abraham Lincoln [1860; rpt., Bloomington, Ind., 1960])

Phillips, Wendell (1811-84).

Phillips joined the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1837 and became a leading advocate of abolition. During the Civil War he was often severely critical of AL's administration, though approving the Emancipation Proclamation. (Dictionary of American Biography)

Pierce, Edward L. (1829-97).

Pierce graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School. He practiced briefly in Cincinnati in the office of Salmon P. Chase, whom he later served as secretary in Washington, D.C. He was a Massachusetts member of the Republican National Convention that nominated AL. In 1863, at Chase's request, AL appointed Pierce collector of internal revenue at Boston. After the Civil War Pierce was a political officeholder in Massachusetts and authored the official biography of Charles Sumner. (DAB)

Pinkerton, Allan (1819-84).

Pinkerton was a Chartist refugee from Scotland who began his American police work as a sheriff 's deputy in Cook and Kane Counties, Illinois, and as the first detective in Chicago's newly organized police force. He established a private detective agency in 1850, one of the first of its kind in the country, the success of which brought it (and him) a national reputation. In addition to thwarting an early attempt on AL's life, Pinkerton directed important counterespionage activities for the Union army. (DAB)

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Pirtle, Henry (1798-1880).

A prominent Kentucky lawyer and jurist, Pirtle was a partner of James Speed, who served in AL's cabinet, and whose brother, Joshua Fry Speed, was perhaps AL's closest friend. (National Cyclopedia of American Biography; Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky)

Pitcher, John (1794-1892).

After graduating from Yale and studying law, Pitcher traveled West, finally settling in southern Indiana, where he practiced law until after the Civil War. An itinerant lawyer, Pitcher practiced in Spencer County at the time AL lived there. (Statement of Kate Pitcher Whitworth, n.d., HW)

Porter, Jasper W. (1841-1921).

Porter was Champaign County circuit clerk from 1876 to 1888 and again from 1896 to 1912. (Champaign News Gazette, June 4, 1921; History of Champaign County [Philadelphia, 1878])

Powell, Elihu Newport (1809-71).

Powell came from Ohio in 1836 to Peoria, where he practiced law and was involved in local politics. In 1856 he was elected judge of the Sixteenth Circuit to fill a vacancy, returning to private practice at the end of his term. (Peoria Transcript, July 17, 1871; History of Peoria County [Chicago, 1880])

Rardin, James K. (1851-1912).

A Coles County, Illinois, native who entered the newspaper business in Charleston in 1880, Rardin moved to Chicago in 1887 to edit a Democratic campaign sheet and later returned to Charleston to establish another Democratic paper. (HEI/ Coles; PBRCC; Charleston Courier, December 14, 1912; letter from Paul H. Verduin, September 21, 1994)

Ray, Charles Henry (1821-70).

A New Yorker who moved west in 1843, Ray met AL in 1845 while editing a temperance paper in Springfield. After a stint editing the Democratic Galena Jeffersonian, Ray took a strong stand against the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In 1855 he purchased an interest in the Chicago Tribune and became its editor in chief. He was a founder of the Republican party in Illinois. (NCAB; HEI; ALE)

Richardson, Joseph C. (1816-92).

Richardson grew up in the same neighborhood as AL in Spencer County, Indiana. Later in life he became active in Republican party politics. (Evansville Journal, August 6, 1892; Richardson file, Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial. Lincoln City, Ind.)

Richardson, Nancy Castleman (1783-1868).

Nancy Richardson and her husband, John, moved to Spencer County, Indiana, from Kentucky in 1817 and were early neighbors of the Lincoln family. Silas and

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Joseph Richardson, both WHH informants, were her children. (Richardson file, LBNM; Nila Michel Papers, LBNM)

Richardson, Silas (1812-84).

Richardson lived on Thomas Lincoln's land in Spencer County after the Lincolns left Indiana for Illinois. He was a brother-in-law of WHH informants David Turnham and John S. Houghland. (Indiana Pocket Weekly. IPW, February 2, 1884; Federal Census, Spencer County, Ind., 1880; Richardson file, LBNM)

Riggin, Augustus Kerr (1822-1903).

Riggin was a prosperous landowner in Menard County, the son of an early settler and founder of the town of Athens. He was an active Democrat until 1860. (James T. Hickey, "Three R's in Lincoln Education: Rogers, Riggin and Rankin," Journal of Illinois State Historical Society 52 [1959])

Roby, Absolom (ca. 1784-1870).

Of Maryland birth, Roby was living in Spencer County, Indiana, by 1828 and was a neighbor of the Lincolns. (Spencer County [Ind.] Cemetery Inscriptions [Rockport, Ind., 1987])

Rodman, Jesse H. (1815-75).

Rodman, whose grandfather performed the marriage ceremony for AL's parents, lived in LaRue County, Kentucky, from 1838 until his death and called on AL during the Civil War to have his county's draft quota reduced. (Bessie Miller Elliott, History of LaRue County, Kentucky [N.p., n.d.]; Benningfield, 30)

Roe, Edward Reynolds (1813-93).

Roe was a physician and an early faculty member at Illinois Wesleyan University. Wounded in the Civil War, he returned to Bloomington in 1863, where he was elected circuit clerk in McLean County. (Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois)

Romine, John (1806-88).

A near neighbor of the Lincolns in Spencer County, Indiana, Romine was a member of Little Pigeon Baptist Church and the son-in-law of the area's leading citizen, James Gentry of Gentryville. (IPW, March 24, 1888; Romine file, LBNM)

Rowbotham, John B..

Rowbotham was the illustrator of Barrett's Life of Abraham Lincoln and apparently a resident of Cincinnati.

Rutledge, James McGrady (1814-99).

Rutledge was a cousin of Ann Rutledge and said by family members to be her confidante when she was engaged to AL. He knew AL at New Salem and carried chain for him when he was surveying. For many years he evaded WHH's attempts

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to interview him about his cousin's love affair with AL. (Miller; Fern Nance Pond, ed., "The Memoirs of James McGrady Rutledge," JISHS 29 [1936])

Rutledge, Jasper Newton (1837-1919).

A Menard County farmer and Republican officeholder, Rutledge was a first cousin of Ann Rutledge and the brother of James McGrady Rutledge. Born two years after his cousin's death, his knowledge of her love affair and engagement with AL came from his brother and others. (Miller; tombstone at Oakland Cemetery, Petersburg, Ill.)

Rutledge, John Miller (1810-79).

The second child of Mary Ann and James Rutledge, one of the founders of New Salem, and the brother of Ann Rutledge. John Rutledge was living in New Salem in 1829 and during the Black Hawk War served as a private in AL's company. After the deaths of his father and sister in 1835, he and his family moved to Fulton County, Illinois, and later to Van Buren County, Iowa. (Camerons: Westward They Came; Walsh; Whitney)

Rutledge, Robert Brannon (1819-81).

A younger brother of John and Ann Rutledge, he grew up in New Salem and knew AL there. Rutledge came into possession of the copy of Kirkham's Grammar that AL and Ann Rutledge were said to have used. In 1863 he was appointed federal provost marshal for Iowa and later became WHH's source for the Rutledge family's views and recollections. (CWTC; Walsh)

Ryan, Margaret.

A former domestic servant in the Lincoln home, Ryan was interviewed by JWW in Springfield. According to JWW she called on AL in the White House, but nothing further has been definitely learned about her. If she is the same person whose obituary appeared in ISJ, March 29, 1915, she was an Irish immigrant who was born about 1839.

Sawyer, Elizabeth Butterfield (1827-1904).

Sawyer's father was Justin Butterfield, a Whig associate and sometime political rival of AL. She was the wife of Sidney Sawyer, a successful Chicago druggist. (Federal Census, Cook County, 1860; "Graceland Cemetery Records," Chicago)

Scott, John Milton (1832-98).

Scott practiced law in Bloomington and held local political offices in McLean County. He replaced David Davis on the bench of the Eighth Circuit in 1862 and in 1870 was elevated to the Illinois Supreme Court. (NCAB; BEI)

Scripps, John L. (1818-66).

In 1848 Scripps purchased an interest in the Chicago Tribune, becoming its principal editor. Upon selling his interest to a Whig group, he began publishing the

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Daily Democratic Press in 1852. When the Chicago Press and Tribune was formed in 1858, Scripps again served as its senior editor. He composed a brief campaign biography of AL in 1860, for which AL answered questions about his early life and wrote out a biographical statement. AL appointed him Chicago postmaster in 1861. (NCAB; ALE)

Scroggs, John W. (1817-74).

Scroggs purchased the Central Illinois Gazette of Champaign in 1858 and was an early presidential supporter of AL. He was elected to the Illinois legislature in 1868 and served as a trustee of the University of Illinois from 1867 to 1869. (University of Illinois Alumni Record [1918]; Burt E. Powell, Semi-Centennial History of the University of Illinois [Urbana, Ill., 1918])

Selby, Paul (1825-1913).

While editor of the Morgan Journal in Jacksonville, Selby was active in organizing the Republican party of Illinois. He was a member of the Anti-Nebraska state convention that met in Springfield in 1854 and the Anti-Nebraska editorial convention that met in Decatur in 1856 to appoint the first Republican State Central Committee. (HEI)

Shanks, John Peter Cleaver (1826-1901).

Shanks was elected to Congress in 1860 and served one term before volunteering for the Union army, after which he served a second term. (Rebecca A. Shepherd, Charles W. Calhoun, Elizabeth Shanahan-Shoemaker and Alan F. January, comps., Biographical Directory of the Indiana General Assembly [Indianapolis, 1980])

Shaw, J. Henry (1825-85).

Shaw came to Illinois from Massachusetts in 1836 and eventually established a law practice at Beardstown. A talented writer and orator who later served in the Illinois House of Representatives, he appeared for the prosecution in the William "Duff" Armstrong murder case in 1858, the famous "almanac" case in which AL played the decisive role in gaining an acquittal for the son of his old friends Jack and Hannah Armstrong. (William Henry Perrin, ed., History of Cass County, Ill. [Chicago, 1880]; Virginia [Ill.] Gazette, August 17, 1885)

Short, James (1807-74).

James Short's family settled very early in the New Salem area, and Short became one of AL's best friends. In bidding in AL's surveying equipment when it was auctioned off for debt and returning it to him, Short proved himself an important benefactor. Like AL, Short was a Whig in an area that was predominantly Democratic. When AL was elected president, he appointed Short agent for the Round Valley Indian Reservation in California. (Petersburg Democrat, February 21, 1874; Josephine Lynch Short, comp., Short: An Early Virginia Family [N.p., n.d.])

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Shutt, George (ca. 1832-93).

After moving to Springfield from Virginia, Shutt became a lawyer and involved in railroad development in Illinois. He was a neighbor of the Lincolns. (ISJ, October 4, 1893; Leesburg [Va.] Mirror, October 5, 1893)

Smith, James (1801-71).

A native of Glasgow, Scotland, Smith came to Springfield in 1849 to become pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, where he served until 1856. He became acquainted with AL in 1850 when he conducted the funeral of AL's son Edward. Two years later MTL joined Smith's church. In 1863 Smith secured an appointment as U.S. consul at Dundee, Scotland, by appealing directly to MTL, who intervened on his behalf. (Albert Post, "Lincoln and the Reverend James Smith," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 35 [1942]; Edgar DeWitt Jones, Lincoln and the Preachers [New York, 1948])

Smoot, Coleman (1791 or 1794-1876).

Smoot came to Sangamon County, Illinois, from Kentucky, settling in Indian Creek Precinct, where he became a successful farmer and stockraiser and served as its first justice of the peace. (Onstot; HMMC; letter from James P. Jones, March 13, 1993)

Spears, George (1805-92).

Spears was the son of a Kentucky slaveholder. After marrying in 1824, he migrated to Illinois with his wife, parents, and two former slaves. They settled in Clary's Grove, near what would later become the town of Tallula, and built one of the earliest brick homes in the region. (McKenzie; HMMC)

Spears, John Quincy (1828-1911).

Spears, a son of George Spears, farmed in Menard County, Illinois, and became a major landowner and merchant. (HMMC; Petersburg Observer, April 7, 1911)

Speed, Joshua Fry (1814-82).

Speed has been called "Lincoln's only intimate friend." He was born of a prominent family near Louisville, Kentucky, and attended college for a year before moving to Springfield, Illinois, in 1835. He was a partner in a general store when AL moved to Springfield from New Salem in 1837 and began to share his lodgings over the store. Speed's store became a popular evening gathering place for the young men of the town, with AL often at the center of attention. Speed accompanied his socially awkward friend on visits to the Edwards home on "Quality Hill," where they met the Springfield belles of the day. Sharing similar temperaments and anxieties about women and marriage, Speed and AL's intense friendship survived a brief rivalry for the hand of Matilda Edwards before Speed returned to Kentucky in 1841. Speed helped AL through a period of suicidal depression following his breakup with Mary Todd in the winter of 1840-41, and AL returned the favor when Speed became apprehensive about his own forthcoming marriage in 1842. Speed

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made a fortune in the Louisville area in real estate and business and, though disturbed by the Emancipation Proclamation, remained loyal to the Lincoln administration during the Civil War. Speed's older brother, James, served as AL's second attorney general, from 1864 to 1865. (ALE; BEK; Douglas L. Wilson, "Abraham Lincoln and 'that fatal first of January,'" Civil War History 38:2 [June 1992])

Stuart, John Todd (1807-85).

Perhaps the person most responsible for AL's choice of law as a career, Stuart was born near Lexington, Kentucky, and was related to both Mary Todd and Stephen T. Logan. After graduation from Centre College and law study, Stuart moved to Springfield, Illinois, in 1828. He met AL in the Black Hawk War of 1832 and encouraged his political ambitions. When AL began his first term in the Illinois General Assembly in 1834, Stuart, then in his second term, served as AL's legislative mentor and encouraged him to study law. In 1837 AL moved from New Salem to Springfield to become Stuart's law partner and ran the firm single-handedly while Stuart was in Congress. Their partnership was dissolved amicably in 1841. Though both were strong Whigs and close political allies for many years, with the breakup of the Whig party in the 1850s AL and Stuart diverged. He declined to support AL either for the senate or the presidency and successfully ran for Congress as a Democrat in 1862. During the Civil War he supported the Union, though he was unsympathetic to emancipation. After the Civil War he was for years a director of the National Lincoln Monument Association. (ALE; DAB)

Sumner, Charles (1811-74).

An outspoken senatorial advocate of equal rights for blacks and whites and a critic of AL's apparent tardiness in acting against slavery, Sumner nonetheless remained on friendly terms with the president. (Dictionary of American Biography. DAB; The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia. ALE)

Swett, Leonard (1825-89).

A Maine native, Swett briefly attended Waterville (now Colby) College, leaving that institution to read law. After serving in the Mexican War he settled in Bloomington, Illinois, where in 1849 he met AL on the Eighth Judicial Circuit. Rising to become one of the most astute and sought-after lawyers in the state, Swett was at the same time a close legal and political associate of AL. He worked hard in 1860 and 1864 on behalf of AL's presidential nomination and renomination, and he also pressed David Davis's case for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Although effective in promoting the political interests of others, Swett was awarded no political office of his own. He moved to Chicago in 1865, where he earned a reputation as a successful criminal lawyer. In 1875 he represented Robert Todd Lincoln in the latter's suit to have his mother declared insane. (ALE; HEI)

Taylor, Green B. (ca. 1819-?).

Taylor was the son of James Taylor, for whom AL reportedly worked as a farm hand and operator of a ferry across Anderson River, near its junction with the Ohio, in

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1825. (Louis A. Warren, Lincoln's Youth: Indiana Years, Seven to Twenty-One, 1816-1830 [Indianapolis, 1959])

Taylor, James (1814-73).

Taylor was born in Christian County, Kentucky, and raised in Springfield, Illinois. Successively a resident of Petersburg, Springfield, and Beardstown, he served in the Black Hawk War and later as sheriff of Cass County, from 1850 to 1859. (Power; letter from Frances M. Winston, October 7, 1991)

Terry, Oliver C. (1834-1907).

Terry served as city treasurer and mayor of Mt. Vernon, Posey County, Indiana, where he interviewed Judge John Pitcher. (History of Posey County, Ind. [Chicago, 1886]; pension files, National Archives, Washington, D.C.)

Thomas, William (1802-89).

Thomas, a resident of Jacksonville, served in the Illinois Senate, the House, and as a circuit judge. (John F. Snyder, headnote to William Thomas, "The Winnebago War of 1827," Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society [1907]; BEI)

Thompson, Ella Armstrong (ca. 1841-97).

The wife of Reverend E. J. Thompson, Ella Thompson served as scribe for Eliza Rumsey Francis in her abbreviated correspondence with WHH and JWW. (letter from Sandy McGuire, June 26, 1994)

Treat, Samuel Hubbel (1811-87).

Treat moved from New York to Springfield, where his success at the Sangamon County bar was so rapid that by 1839 he had been appointed to the bench of the Eighth Circuit. In 1841 he was appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court, where he sat until 1855, when he was appointed judge of the new federal district of southern Illinois. (DAB)

Turney, William A..

Turney was clerk of the Second Grand Division of the Illinois Supreme Court from 1855 to 1870. (Blue Book of Illinois [Springfield, Ill., 1931])

Turnham, David (1803-84).

A near neighbor and friend of AL in Indiana, Turnham claimed to have lent him books, including Revised Statutes of Indiana. First a farmer and later a merchant, he helped build the Little Pigeon Baptist Church, where AL's family worshiped. (letter from Barbara Hevron, January 25, 1992; Turnham file, LBNM)

Ulrich, Barlow A. (1840-1930).

Ulrich was born in New York and raised in Springfield, Illinois. He received a law degree from the University of Michigan in 1864 and began practicing in Chicago, where he also engaged in the real estate business. (NCAB)

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Van Bergen, Peter (1800-1879).

Considered one of Springfield's most prominent and influential citizens in its early days, Van Bergen came to Illinois in 1830 and dealt extensively in real estate in and around Springfield. A staunch Republican, he was once a demanding creditor but later a personal friend of AL. (Wallace)

Van Nattan, Clarissa Tuft (1847-1929).

The Tuft family lived near the Lincolns in Springfield. Clarissa Tuft married Norman A. Van Nattan, a Civil War veteran and a farmer. (HEI/Sangamon; ISJ, January 6, 1929)

Vineyard, Benjamin R. (1842-1905).

Vineyard's mother was Mary Owens Vineyard, the woman AL courted while at New Salem. He was also the nephew of another of WHH's informants, Elizabeth Abell, the sister of Mary Owens. Vineyard was an attorney in St. Joseph, Missouri, after the Civil War. (Bench and Bar of St. Louis, Kansas City, Jefferson City, and Other Missouri Cities [St. Louis and Chicago, 1887]; A. J. D. Stewart, ed., The History of the Bench and Bar of Missouri [St. Louis, 1898]; letter from Sue Horvath, August 11, 1994)

Vineyard, Mary Owens (1808-77).

Born in Green County, Mary Owens was a well-educated member of a wealthy Kentucky family. In 1833, while visiting her sister Elizabeth (Mrs. Bennett Abell), in New Salem, she first met AL. Three years later she renewed her acquaintance with AL, who had engaged with her sister to court Mary. In spite of disputes and differences, AL proposed marriage in the fall of 1837, but she rejected him, remarking later that "Mr. Lincoln was deficient in those little links which make up the great chain of woman[']s happiness." WHH heard of this courtship from other informants and persuaded Mary Owens Vineyard to share both her story and AL's letters to her. (ALE; R. Gerald McMurtry, appendix to McMurtry and Olive Carruthers, Lincoln's Other Mary [Chicago and New York, 1946])

Vineyard, Nancy Graham Owens (?-1888).

Another sister of Mary Owens Vineyard, the two married brothers. (The History of Refugio County, Texas, 1836-1986 [Dallas, 1985])

Walker, William F. (1820-98).

AL's co-counsel in the murder trial of William "Duff" Armstrong at Beardstown in 1858, Walker was a successful attorney in Havana, Illinois. The alleged murder took place in Mason County, where Havana is located, but the trial was moved to Beardstown in Cass County on a change of venue. (Helena Worner, Walker's Grove [N.p., 1965]; letter from William Reese Walker, January 15, 1993)

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Wallace, Frances Todd (1817-99).

Frances Todd, an older sister of MTL, came to Springfield from Kentucky to live with another sister, Elizabeth Edwards. Her marriage to Dr. William S. Wallace, a leading Springfield physician, in 1839 made room in the Edwards household for the younger sister, Mary. The Wallaces were present at the wedding of AL and Mary Todd at the Edwards home on November 4, 1842. (Wayne C. Temple, ed., Mrs. Frances Jane Wallace Describes Lincoln's Wedding [Harrowgate, Tenn., 1960]; Illinois State Journal, August 16, 1899)

Warner, Stephen M. (1831-96).

A native of New England, Warner, along with Ferdinand Kohl of St. Louis, established the Centralia Iron and Nail Works in Centralia, Illinois. (Centralia Sentinel, April 16, 1896)

Wartmann, James W. (1832-1917).

Virginia-born Wartmann attended school in Cincinnati before moving to Spencer County, Indiana, where he practiced law in Rockport. In 1864 he moved to Evansville to serve as provost marshal and then commissioner of the board of enrollment. Though Wartmann apparently met AL in Washington, D.C., while on official business, he became WHH's first contact in Spencer County, Indiana, by being handed a letter that WHH had sent to Rockport addressed simply "Some Good Union Lawyer." (Evansville Courier, April 16, 1915; Evansville Journal-News, July 2 and 3, 1917)

Weber, John B. (1810-89).

Originally a cabinetmaker by trade, Weber was appointed copyist of the land records of Illinois in 1841, following a disabling accident. Like his brother George R. Weber, an editor of the Illinois State Register in Springfield, John B. Weber began political life as a Democrat but converted to Republicanism following the Kansas-Nebraska Act. (Power; HSC; burial record card, Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Ill.)

Weldon, Lawrence (1829-1905).

In 1854 Weldon moved to Clinton, Illinois, and thereafter practiced law on the Eighth Judicial Circuit with AL. In 1861 AL appointed him U.S. district attorney for the Southern District of Illinois. Later he practiced in Bloomington and served as associate justice of the U.S. Court of Claims. (HEI; New York Times, April 11, 1905)

Wentworth, John (1815-88).

After arriving in Chicago in 1836, "Long John" Wentworth became editor and then proprietor of the Chicago Democrat. A Democratic congressman in 1843-51 and 1853-55, he bolted from the party after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise

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and joined the Republicans. Elected mayor of Chicago in 1857 and again in 1860, he aggressively supported AL's administration during the Civil War, even though relations between the two men were never cordial. (HEI; DAB)

White, Horace (1834-1916).

Born in New Hampshire, White moved with his family to Beloit, Wisconsin, in 1838 after his father founded the town. He graduated from Beloit College in 1853 and moved to Chicago, where he began a long journalistic career. In 1858 he reported the Lincoln-Douglas debates for the partisan Republican newspaper Chicago Press and Tribune, and during the Civil War he served as the paper's Washington, D.C., correspondent. After the war he bought an interest in the Tribune, serving as its editor in chief from 1865 to 1874. In 1884 he purchased an interest in the New York Evening Post, becoming its chief editor in 1899. He was instrumental in finding a publisher for the second edition (1892) of WHH's and JWW's biography of AL and contributed a chapter on the debates. (National Cyclopedia of American Biography. NCAB; Dictionary of American Biography. DAB)

Whitehurst, Stephen S. (1828-75).

In 1848 Whitehurst became editor of a Springfield temperance paper, the Illinois Organ. The next year he married Maria C. Matheny, the sister of AL's friend James Matheny. Later he served as deputy circuit clerk in Sangamon County and in the 1860s as circuit clerk. (Power; HSC; letter from Terence A. Tanner, January 6, 1993)

Whitney, Henry Clay (1831-1905).

Whitney came to Urbana, Illinois, in 1854 and practiced law with AL on the Eighth Judicial Circuit for the next seven years. Shortly after his inauguration AL appointed Whitney a paymaster of volunteers, a position he held until March 1865. After the war Whitney practiced law in Kansas and then moved to Chicago, where he was associated with Walter B. Scates, former justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. In 1892 he published a memoir, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln. (Paul M. Angle, "Introduction," in Henry Clay Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln [1892; rpt., Caldwell, Idaho, 1940]; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army [Washington, D.C., 1903])

Wickizer, John H. (1821-89).

A Pennsylvania-born legal colleague of AL on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, Wickizer came to Bloomington in 1847, where he served as mayor and represented McLean County in the Illinois legislature for several terms. During and after the Civil War he held a variety of federal appointments under Republican administrations. (Transactions of the McLean County Historical Society 2 [1903]; The History of McLean County, Ill. [Chicago, 1879])

Wilder, Daniel Webster (1832-1911).

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Wilder graduated from Harvard in 1856, studied law at Harvard Law School, and was admitted to the bar in Boston in 1857. He

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then went west, editing outspoken Republican newspapers in Kansas and Missouri. In 1863 AL appointed him surveyor-general of Kansas and Nebraska. (NCAB; William E. Connelley, "Daniel W. Wilder, the Father of Kansas History and Literature," Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society 16 [1923-25])

Wilson, Henry (1812-75).

A Massachusetts politician who nourished a hatred of slavery, Wilson left the Whigs to help found the Free-Soil party in 1848. As a member of the American (Know-Nothing) party in 1854, he again led a revolt over an evasive stand on slavery. Wilson was elected in 1855 to the U.S. Senate, where he chaired its Committee on Military Affairs during the Civil War and constantly urged AL to proclaim emancipation. He was vice president of the United States under Ulysses S. Grant from 1873 to 1875, when he died in office. (DAB)

Wilson, Joseph S..

Wilson was commissioner of the General Land Office in 1860-61 and again in 1866-71, serving as chief clerk in the interim. (Vernon Carstensen, The Public Lands: Studies in the History of the Public Domain [Madison, Wis., 1963])

Wilson, Robert L. (1805-80).

Of Pennsylvania birth, Wilson graduated from Franklin College in Ohio and moved to Sangamon County, Illinois, in 1833. In 1836 he was elected from Sangamon County to the Illinois House of Representatives where, with AL, he was one of the celebrated "Long Nine" who successfully brought the Illinois capital to Springfield. In 1840 Wilson moved to Whiteside County, Illinois, where he was appointed clerk of the circuit court, a position he held for twenty years. During the Civil War he was appointed a paymaster by AL. (The Biographical Record of Whiteside County, Ill. [Chicago, 1900])

Wilson, William L..

A William Wilson served in the Black Hawk War in a Schuyler County company that belonged to the same regiment as the company AL commanded. (Whitney)

Wintersmith, Robert Lawrence (1816-90).

A rare Kentucky Republican, Wintersmith was in the mercantile business in Elizabethtown and Louisville, as well as in New Albany, Indiana. (Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky; Who Was Who in Hardin County)

Wood, William (1784-1867).

After migrating from Maryland by way of Kentucky, Wood settled in Indiana territory by 1812. As occupant of a farm a mile and a half north of the Lincoln farm, Wood was a relatively close neighbor. (Spencer County Census, 1850; Nila Michel Papers, cemetery inscriptions, Wood file, LBNM)

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Wortham, H. C..

Wortham was clerk of the Coles County Circuit Court in 1864-72. (HCC)

Wright, Asa D. (1811-71).

Wright was a New Yorker who came to Menard County, Illinois, in the early 1830s. He served in the Mexican War and was involved in civic and business affairs in and around Petersburg. (IAMM; Miller; pension files, National Archives, Washington, D.C.)

Zane, Charles Shuster (1831-1915).

New Jersey-born Zane moved to Sangamon County during his youth. He attended McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois, from 1852 to 1855 and in 1856 began to study law with James C. Conkling. He was admitted to the Illinois bar the next year and in 1861 began practicing with WHH when AL left for Washington, D.C. After leaving WHH's office, Zane served as register of the Springfield Land Office, was the partner of Shelby Cullom (1870-73), and later served as chief justice of Utah Territory. He was married to Margaret Maxcy, a niece of WHH. (Dictionary of American Biography; National Cyclopedia of American Biography)