Lincoln's First Love

[LincolnToddFan]

On page #45 is says that AR's birthday was the 15th of July, but that is not true. Her date of birth is/was Jan. 7th.

Roger, I spent the first ten years of my life in Ohio. Just like in Illinois, Lincoln was taught to us like catechism. I can still recite the Gettysburg Address from memory, and I even remember the lines of a poem that was forced upon us on one of his birthdays when I was about 6 or 7..."all the folks in Springfield/saw him everyday/walking down the road in his long, gaunt way......"

Just like you, I had Ann Rutledge presented to me as indisputable fact. For a brief while before I grew old enough to do my own reading, I knew more about her than Mary Todd. I was shocked to discover how very little there is on record about her and the relationship with AL. People seemed to have taken this obscure relationship from the fog of AL's youth and blown it up completely out of proportion. I confess that even though I accepted the story of the relationship, it didn't interest me or appeal to me then and it still doesn't. Frankly the young lady sounded sweet, but dull as all hell(what little we know about her). I simply cannot imagine AL going all the way to the WH with this mouse as his wife, or even very far in life at all.

Instead, he might have ended his days as a content, 80-something farmer/lawyer tilling the land by the Sangamon River, with a gaggle of children and grandchildren around him.

And neither the Republic(if it had survived the turbulent 19th century without him) or the world would have been any wiser.