1865 Abraham Lincoln Smiling / Last Portrait From Life ??

[L Verge]

That article is fantastic! So is the lithograph. I was especially pleased to see the name "L Prang" on it. I no longer collect, but for years I collected 19th-century greeting cards. Louis Prang is considered the Father of the American Greeting Card industry.

Prang was born in Prussian Silesia and later became part of the revolutionary movement that swept Europe in the 1840s and 50s. He got in trouble with the Prussian government and fled to America in 1850, settling in Massachusetts. He began work here making wood engravings for book illustrations and worked with Frank Leslie's firm for awhile.

He started his own business to specialize in colored lithography - first in business advertisements and then in producing war maps during our Civil War. After the war, he turned his talents to creating greeting cards, which were popular in England - especially Christmas cards - and album cards that were popular to collect and add to scrapbooks. At one time, he advertised that he could produce as many as twenty-three different colors on a single card, which was unheard of in those days.

It was nice to see his name attached to the Lincoln engraving.