Mary Lincoln's Fashions

[LincolnToddFan]

Other than four beloved sons he cherished, I really have no idea.But Ruth Painter Randall( Katherine Helm,Mary, Wife of Lincoln)writes of a small birthday dinner she organized for him in Feb 1843, his first birthday as her husband. She presented him with a cake and some black carpet slippers on which she had personally embroidered his initials AL and made a sweet little speech..."I am so happy you have a birthday...I am so grateful to your mother". (Daniel Mark Epstein, The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage pg#61)

She also had some sewing cushions she embroidered with her husband's face all over them. Until recently, these were in the private collection of Louise Taper. Now they are in the Lincoln Library and Museum.

She did have a new bed custom made for him in their Springfield home during the 1854 enlargement of the house, and yet another oversize bed built for her husband's comfort, ordered from Philadelphia during their WH years. It is the bed in which Willie Lincoln died and I doubt if Lincoln ever slept in it.

It eventually went to what was then the Prince of Wales Room. Now it's part of the Lincoln Bedroom.