October - December 2006
Volume 6 Number 4
STEADY PROGRESS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
I
n September 2006, Associate Director John Lupton began
working at the National Archives in College Park,
Maryland. He replaced Director Daniel Stowell, who had
worked there for three months to train new employees Ed
Bradley and Karen Needles and to research in several
Karen Needles, Ed Bradley, and John Lupton
at work at Archives II
record groups. Lupton continued to supervise Bradley’s and
Needles’s progress in addition to examining records of the
Department of the Interior. After overseeing the hiring and
training of new employee Melanie Miller, Lupton returned
to Springfield at the end of November leaving a well-trained
and experienced team of researchers to continue steady work
at the National Archives.
After six months, the project has located more than
four thousand documents either by or to Abraham Lincoln
with most of the documents coming from the Treasury, State,
and Interior Department records. As an example of the types
of records found, Lupton and Miller uncovered nearly fifty
letters written to Lincoln in 1849 regarding Interior
Department appointments in Illinois. As the only Whig
representative from Illinois in the Thirtieth Congress, Lincoln
received letters from people across the state—not just from
constituents in his congressional district—recommending
others for land office appointments or hoping to secure a
position for themselves. Six of these letters have an
endorsement by Lincoln directing it to the Interior
Department for consideration.
NEW RESEARCH ASSISTANT BEGINS WORK IN D.C.
T
he project has hired Melanie Miller as a research
assistant to assist staff already in place at the National
Archives in College Park, Maryland. Miller began work in
November. She is a graduate student at the University of
Maryland and will work for the project on a part-time basis
while she finishes a master’s degree in history.
Miller earned her bachelor’s degree in history at
Douglass College, the Women’s College of Rutgers, the State
University of New Jersey. She has worked as an archives
technician at the National Archives and Records
Administration and was a Consortium on Race, Gender,
and Ethnicity Scholar at the University of Maryland.
At the 2005 National
Women’s Studies Conference, she
presented a paper entitled
“Intersections of Representations,
Images, and Agency by Gender,
Race, and Ethnicity.” A native of
New Jersey, Miller resides in Silver
Spring, Maryland.
PROJECT TRAVEL CONTINUES
D
uring the fall, research teams wrapped up the season
of travel, visiting more than twenty sites in five states to
scan Lincoln documents. They visited twenty repositories
and the homes of three private collectors. They traveled
within Illinois and to Kentucky, Massachusetts, North
Carolina, and Tennessee.
In October...
Patricia Virgil of the Buffalo and Erie County
Historical Society provided digital images of the six Lincoln
documents the society owns.
Chris Schnell and Erika Nunamaker visited five
repositories in the Boston metropolitan area, from which they
obtained scans of more than three hundred documents,
including several previously unpublished documents. They
are indebted to the following individuals for their gracious
help: Leanne Hayden at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield;
Irene Axelrod at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem; Ruth
Rogers and Mariana Oller at the Clapp Library at Wellesley
College in Wellesley; Christine Sullivan at the Captain Forbes
House Museum in Milton; and Stephen Plotkin at the John
F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.
Kelley Boston and Daniel Stowell traveled to North
Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. They visited ten
repositories and two private collectors and scanned thirtyone documents. They would like to acknowledge the
assistance of Gerald R. Parnell at the University of North
Carolina at Wilmington; Dr. Jeffrey Crow and Jesse R.
Lankford at the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh;
Linda McCurdy and Elizabeth Dunn at the Rare Book,
Manuscripts, and Special Collections Library at Duke
University in Durham, NC; Suzanne Porter at the Duke
University Medical Center Library in Durham, NC; Gwen
Erickson at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC; Steve
Harrison and Lynn Savage at the Carl Sandburg Home
National Historic Site in Flat Rock, NC; George Comparetto
at the Polk County Historical Association in Tryon, NC;
Kendra Hinkle at the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site
in Greeneville, TN; Tommy Hines at the Shaker Museum at
South Union in Auburn, KY; Nick Wyman at the University
of Tennessee in Knoxville; William Jayne III of Bowling
Green, KY; and Laurie Warden of Russellville, KY.
In November...
Kelley Boston and Erika Nunamaker scanned
documents at Knox College and the Galesburg Public
Library, both in Galesburg, Illinois. They wish to thank
Director Pam Van Kirk and Archivist Patty Mosher, both of
the Galesburg library, and Carley Robision, curator of
manuscripts and archives at Knox College.
Stacy McDermott and Erika Nunamaker traveled
to Wheaton and Naperville in northern Illinois to digitize
documents at Cantigny and North Central College. The
Robert R. McCormick Research Center at Cantigny, the
estate of the late publisher of the Chicago Tribune, holds
eight Lincoln documents, including two previously unknown
letters from Lincoln to Charles H. Ray, co-publisher of the
Chicago Press & Tribune in the 1850s. Special thanks to
Eric Gillespie, director of the research center, who made the
documents accessible and assisted the project in gaining
access to a document on display at the Cantigny mansion.
Thanks also to Ted Schwitzner, technical services coordinator
at the Oesterle Library at North Central College, which holds
a military commission signed by Abraham Lincoln.
Chris Schnell and Kelley Boston scanned two
Lincoln documents at the home of collector Jeff Deremiah in
Decatur, Illinois. Deremiah owns documents signed by all of
the United States presidents and the Illinois governors. He
was kind enough to provide access to his Lincoln documents
and offered a tour of his house to view the collection.
Erika Nunamaker visited Bradley University in
Peoria, Illinois, and obtained scans of six documents,
including a ca. 1855 notebook in which Lincoln recorded
the names of all the Illinois legislators. The project thanks
Special Collections Librarian Charles Frey for his assistance.
DONORS
T
he project acknowledges with deep appreciation the
generosity of the following contributors:
Benjamin Shapell
Bill and Mary Shepherd
Zeta Psi Fraternity, University of Illinois
Abraham Lincoln to Joseph S. McIntire
November 14, 1851
In November, Chris Schnell and Erika Nunamaker digitized
this letter from Lincoln to Joseph S. McIntire at the Birks
Museum at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois.
REPOSITORY SPOTLIGHT
The Captain Forbes House Museum in Milton, Massachusetts
S
ometimes Lincoln documents end up in the most unlikely
places. The early nineteenth-century home of Robert
Bennet Forbes, a China trade merchant and a developer of
Boston as the second busiest American port in the 1830s, is
home to eleven Lincoln documents.
The Lincoln collection in this house museum (pictured
below), located in suburban Boston, consists of three letters
written by Lincoln, three Lincoln endorsements, one deputy
postmaster appointment signed by Lincoln, and four military
commissions also signed by Lincoln.
In 2003, the museum had responded to a telephone
survey conducted by the project. At that time, a member of
the museum staff indicated that the museum had Lincoln
documents but provided no details. So, when Assistant Editor
Chris Schnell and Research Associate Erika Nunamaker
traveled to Boston in October of this year, they added the
museum to their list of libraries and repositories to visit.
Mary Bowditch Forbes, the granddaughter of Robert
Forbes, was a collector of Lincoln artifacts and documents,
which have become part of the collections of the house
museum. The mansion boasts a Lincoln Room, which holds
numerous busts and portraits of Lincoln. A clipped Lincoln
endorsement is also on display in a curio cabinet in a corner
of the room. In the backyard, there is a replica of the cabin
Lincoln lived in as a boy. A sampling of document images
(courtesy of the museum) appears below.
Commission of Nicolas Bowen as 2nd Lieutenant
in the Topographical Engineer Corps
August 19, 1861
Abraham Lincoln to Harvey G. Eastman
April 7, 1860
Abraham Lincoln to Edwin M. Stanton
January 14, 1863
LINCOLN EDITOR
ISSN 1537-226X
The Quarterly Newsletter of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln
Printed by authority of the State of Illinois
(3.8M—12-06)
A Project of
How You Can Help:
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln is cosponsored by
the University of Illinois at Springfield.
• By advising project staff of known or reported Lincoln
documents in your locality. We are seeking copies of any
document, letter, or contemporary printed account that relates
to Abraham Lincoln’s entire life, 1809-1865.
• By making a tax-deductible donation to the Papers of
Abraham Lincoln in support of the project. Such gifts provide
crucial support in furtherance of the project’s objectives.
Project Staff:
Daniel W. Stowell, Director/Editor; John A. Lupton, Associate Director/
Associate Editor; Ed Bradley, Assistant Editor; Susan Krause, Assistant
Editor; Stacy Pratt McDermott, Assistant Editor; Christopher A. Schnell,
Assistant Editor; Kelley Boston, Research Associate; Karen Needles,
Research Associate; Erika Nunamaker, Research Associate; Melanie Miller,
Research Assistant; Marilyn Mueller, Research Assistant; Carmen Morgan,
Secretary; Michael Kelley, Graduate Assistant.
Please address inquiries and gifts to:
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln
#1 Old State Capitol Plaza, Springfield, IL 62701-1512
Phone: (217) 785-9130 Fax: (217) 524-6973
Website: http://www.papersofabrahamlincoln.org
LINCOLN EDITOR
The Quarterly Newsletter of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln
Illinois Historic Preservation Agency
#1 Old State Capitol Plaza
Springfield, IL 62701-1512
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