What did Mr. Lincoln enjoy doing?

[RJNorton]

Fido, I am sure you would have done the same (at least during the time period before Lincoln decided to leave you back in Springfield).

[LincolnMan]

Trigger was the name of Roy Rogers' horse. Of course, now days Roy Rogers is pretty much unknown to the general population. After Trigger passed away he was stuffed and placed in the Roy Rogers Museum. I believe the museum was in Apple Valley, California. The museum is now closed from what I remember. Which leaves us to wonder what has happened to Trigger?

[RJNorton]

Bill, I tried to find the answer on the Internet and found he was sold in an auction for $266,500.00. There is an article from 2010 in USA Today here.

[LincolnMan]

That is a great article Roger. Obviously, the buyer loves Roy Rogers- and everything it meant to so many. I noticed the museum was in Branson. I think it was in California prior to being moved to Missouri. I'm glad Trigger has found a new home.

I was in a Big Boy restaurant last night with Donna. There was music being played overhead- California Girls by the Beach Boys. I asked our twenty- something waitress if she knew the song or the artist. She had no clue. What are the chances she would have known who Roy Rogers or Trigger were?

[L Verge]

First, I'm envious that you still have Big Boy restaurants in your area. They left the D.C. area years ago - and they are missed! However, the Roy Rogers's restaurant chain is making a come-back now. I am a happy camper because my doctor told me years ago that, if I had to eat fast food, theirs was the best for me.

As for your waitress not knowing the Beach Boys, that is surprising and humbling to think I'm that old. I'll send her a Roy Rogers Double R Burger, and then she'll remember the name of Roy Rogers. And, Gene, don't you even try to make a joke about Trigger and the meat content of that burger...

[LincolnMan]

Laurie: we still have Big Boys! But we don't have the Roy Rogers Restaurant- i've never ate there.

[Eva Elisabeth]

This is sure trivia, but I can't help it - I love trivia. Also I find hoaxes interesting and why/ how they came up.
Many websites claim to know A. L.'s favorite food/dish, and I frequently read "fricasseed chicken" without any proof/source given. Recently I came across this, and although there is a footnote reference in the text (6), I can't find it below (or I'm not sufficiently skilled...)

Does anyone know where Mary's + Tad's quotes are from? (Maybe someone thought that if a person once takes three help(ing?)s this must automatically be the one's favorite dish...)

"Alice Johnstone was a cook and domestic whom the Lincolns employed because she desperately needed a job. She was also employed in Mrs. Lincoln's schemes to get the President to eat. 'Alice, do you know how to make a dish of fricasseed chicken and small biscuits with thick cream gravy poured over it, all on one platter?' asked Mrs. Lincoln. Alice's meal was served in the family dining room. It appealed sufficiently to the presidential appetite that Tad exclaimed: 'Oh, Alice, he ate three helps and more gravy than you and me and mother could.'"

http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/insi...ubjectID=2

[RJNorton]

That same story is in Ruth Painter Randall's Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage, but (as was the author's style) there is no footnote.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thank you. Despite the missing footnotes I would love to read that book, but have given up to get it. I saw it's online, maybe I'll print that one out one day.

[LincolnMan]

Because I'm listening to Carl Sandburg's Prairie Years on audiobook presently- posts may come up as I come across things. Here is one that I don't recall really- Sandburg states that young man Abe tried both tobacco and whiskey. He says he tried them both enough to know that he didn't like either. So here are tow things Lincoln did NOT enjoy doing. But I don't know that I've ever read previously that he had actually experimented with either.

[Gene C]

Well Bill, that's like me saying I've experimented with Broccoli

[LincolnMan]

Well, I have had those who claimed that Lincoln was a drinker and smoker (believe it or not)- so it is nice for me to find that Sandburg reference.

[Gene C]

Your right, good to know.
(And I never inhaled)

[Eva Elisabeth]

Are the kittens W. Seward gave to the Lincolns' children mentioned in any other contemporary account but in Fanny Seward's diary?

I've always wondered what happened to the kittens Seward gave to Lincoln and his sons. According to this site (sources???), Tabby was one of them, and the other was named "Dixie":
http://presidentialpetmuseum.com/pets/ab...coln-cats/

"Lincoln...was given an unexpected gift of two kittens from Secretary of State William Seward. The president doted on the cats, which he named Tabby and Dixie...Lincoln’s friend Caleb Carman recalled how the president would pick up one of the cats and 'talk to it for half an hour at a time.' The cats apparently won the president over with their quiet adoration. At one point during his first term, Lincoln observed in frustration, 'Dixie is smarter than my whole cabinet! And furthermore she doesn’t talk back!'”

Never heard of "Dixie" and his smartness - does anyone know of a source??? Or what exactly Fanny Seward wrote in her diary on the kittens?

[Linda Anderson]

Eva, Fanny recorded meeting Lincoln for the first time in her diary entry dated 9/1/1861.

"After dinner Father wh wished to go & see the President and asked
Jenny & I to go too—so in all our traveling attire we
went & made a very informal visit to Mr. Lincoln in
Page 5

his library or office—he received us very cordially, I liked
him very much—he looks sick, & is I fear threatened with
intermitting fever—the room was awfully hot with gas and
a wood fire. Several came in, among them S.P. Chase—
I had some conversation with Mr Nicolay--whom I liked
quite well—we were the [sic] perhaps half an hour or more—I
have no time to write longer of this—home and soon after
to bed—O! Mr. Lincoln showed us the pretty cats, kittens
given him by Father Sunday. They were playing in one ^of the grand^ halls. Mr. L.
^seems quite fond of them. Says they climb all over him."

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?p...&Print=480