Robert Todd Lincoln --The vitals

[kerry]

(01-21-2018 07:43 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  Tarbell never actually wrote about Diller per se, but she fictionalized him as Billy Brown for the He Knew Lincoln series. In her Allegheny College papers are two notes from her interviews. One is 17 pages while the other is only a single page. The single page is the one in which Mary is mentioned.

https://dspace.allegheny.edu/handle/10456/29718

https://dspace.allegheny.edu/handle/10456/26744

Every time I come up with a question that I can't find an answer for, I wonder if it was kept in the files that were trashed. Frustrating is right!

Best
Rob

Thanks! Yeah, imagining all the valuable stuff tossed aside is so aggravating.

I have read that before but didn't get the Billy Brown connection - what makes me laugh is the "appealing to me" part. I wonder if she agreed.

Diller or his wife tells the story of Tad flipping the chessboard - they claim the other player jumped up and freaked out. Judge Treat, the other player, told Weik he said nothing in response. He said that in 1883; the story made the national newspaper rounds in 1897. That's one of the stories that I'm talking about. Diller is a person who knew the Lincolns and is a credible source, but as to that particular incident he's just repeating the same gossip everyone knows, because it's a funny story, and repeating it incorrectly. Stuff that looks like good information on first glance amounts to nothing. It's like there were only 5 stories in Springfield about the Lincoln family. It's weird because presumably Lincoln spent more time with family before he went to the White House, but I guess with Tad tagging along, there were many more stories to share from that period.