Here is an interesting article about Lincoln defending a young man named Peachy Quinn Harrison against a charge of murder

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/10/nyregi...story.html

A more detailed account
http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/c...rison.html

Is there any known early documentation of Abraham Lincoln's February 12, 1809 birth date or the birth date of his sister? Say, from either the extended Lincoln or Hanks famlilies? I'm aware of Lincoln giving his birthday at the start of his political career and the birth dates written in the Lincoln family bible (although those were written in Abraham Lincoln's own hand). Is there any documention that's earlier? The Lincolns were Baptists, so there wouldn't be any infant baptism records, and I doubt there would be any newspaper birth notices for that area of Kentucky at that time. I'm just wondering if there's any documention earlier than four decades after the fact.

My research of late has been focused on William E. Barton and how he related to Ida Tarbell's work. In addition to going through some of his papers in the University of Chicago collection, I've been reading his correspondence with the Bobbs-Merrill Company of Indianapolis, who published the majority of Barton's later books, including his two-volume Life of Abraham Lincoln.

In going through newspaper articles, I came across an article about the discovery of James Smith's The Christian's Defence and how it was said to have influenced Lincoln. What struck me was the closing paragraph of the article, which states "Two years later Lincoln delivered a lecture on the Bible in Smith's church which was said by ministers to be the ablest defense of the Bible ever heard in that pulpit." This is certainly news to me.

I turned to Barton's The Soul of Abraham Lincoln in which he quotes an article written in 1873 that appeared in Scribner's Monthly. The author, James A. Reed, quoted a letter that Smith had written to William Herndon in 1867, after Herndon wrote Smith asking about Lincoln's religious views. Smith wrote a scathing letter to Herndon which also appeared in the Springfield Journal in March 1867. Smith wrote "It will no doubt be gratifying to the friends of Christianity to learn that very shortly after Mr. Lincoln became a member of my congregation, at my request, in the presence of a large assembly at the annual meeting of the Bible Society of Springfield, he delivered an address the object of which was to inculcate the importance of having the Bible placed in possession of every family in the State. In the course of it he drew a striking contrast between the Decalogue and the moral codes of the most eminent lawgivers of antiquity, and closed (as near as I can recollect) in the following language: 'It seems to me that nothing short of infinite wisdom could by any possibility have devised and given to man this excellent and perfect moral code. It is suited to men in all conditions of life, and includes all the duties they owe to their Creator, to themselves, and to their fellow-men.'"

Barton also quoted at length a man named Thomas Lewis, who was a lawyer in Springfield whose office adjoined Lincoln's. In November 1898, Lewis wrote a letter from his home in Kansas which appeared in both Springfield newspapers in which he mentioned the alleged lecture. "Some month's later the session of the church invited Mr. Lincoln to deliver a lecture on the Bible. When it became known that Mr. Lincoln was to lecture in the Presbyterian church it assured a full house. It was said by divines and others to be the ablest defense of the Bible ever uttered in the public. (Barton, The Soul of Abraham Lincoln, 159)

There are a number of issues with this claim. First, Smith's recollection merits only a "C" from the Fehrenbachers, who note "There appears to be no other evidence of Lincoln's having delivered such an address, and all testimony regarding Lincoln's religion should probably be regarded with skepticism." Lewis's recollections comes from a man 46 years after the fact. It should also be noted that in the book Barton puts the article in the Springfield papers on December 10, 1898 while it actually appeared in both papers on December 16, 1898. The confusion may have stemmed from the date of Lewis's letter, which was November 10, 1898.

More important, however, is, as the Fehrenbacher's note, there is no supporting evidence such a lecture ever took place. I searched both the Illinois State Journal and the Illinois State Register for the year 1852 and no mention is made in either paper of a lecture by Lincoln. Given Lewis's claim that the news of Lincoln's lecture "assured a full house" it seems unlikely that neither paper would have some comment on it, especially given Lincoln's known views on religion, if such a lecture ever took place. In addition, there is nothing on the website, The Lincoln Log, about a lecture. 1852 was the year that Lincoln delivered his eulogy on Henry Clay, and he was mentioned often in both papers throughout the year. I personally don't think such a lecture ever took place. But of greater importance to me, does this put into question Smith's entire testimony? In the Collected Works, Lincoln mentions that Smith was "an intimate personal friend of mine" (Vol. 6, Pg. 51) but I don't see any other reference other than second-hand testimony that Lincoln ever read The Christian's Defence nor was moved by its arguments. Even Robert Bray, in his article "What Lincoln Read" calls it unlikely that Lincoln read the book. (Bray, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Summer 2007 Pg. 75) It seems to me that Barton was taken in by testimony presented at the time to negate Herndon's and later Ward Hill Lamon's belief that Lincoln was an infidel.

Best
Rob

This is from an article found here. https://stephenjessetaylor.wordpress.com...history-2/

I hadn't heard this story of Lincoln taking Robert to be cured by a madstone. Is there any truth to it?


"A “widow lady” whom McCormick thinks was Mary Taylor “cured three cases” of hydrophobia in early 1848, according to the Wabash Express.

During the decades when John McCoy and Mrs. Taylor were folk medical practitioners in the Hoosier State, Abraham Lincoln, according to an old claim, brought his son Robert to Terre Haute to be cured of an ominous dog-bite.

Poet and Lincoln biographer Edgar Lee Masters reported this claim in his 1931 Lincoln the Man. (Like the president, Masters was obsessed with melancholy and death. He grew up near Lincoln’s New Salem in Illinois and later set his paranormal masterpiece, Spoon River Anthology, in the old Petersburg cemetery where Lincoln’s first lover, Ann Rutledge, a typhus victim, lies.)

“He believed in the madstone,” Masters wrote, in a section on Lincoln’s superstition, “and one of his sisters-in-law related that Lincoln took one of his boys to Terre Haute, Indiana, to have the stone applied to a wound inflicted by a dog on the boy.”

Max Ehrmann, a once-renowned poet and philosopher who lived in Terre Haute, investigated Masters’ claim in 1936. At the famous hotel called the Terre Haute House, Ehrmann had once heard a similar story from three of Lincoln’s political acquaintances. They told Ehrmann that sometime in the 1850s, Lincoln, then still a lawyer in Springfield, brought Robert to Indiana for a madstone cure. Father and son stayed at The Prairie House at 7th and Wabash, an earlier incarnation of the famous hotel. A sister of Mary Todd Lincoln, Frances Todd Wallace, backed up the story.

“I have never been able to discover who owned the mad-stone,” Ehrmann wrote. “It was a woman, so the story runs.” If true, Robert (the only child of Abraham and Mary Lincoln to survive to adulthood) would have been a young child or teenager. He lived to be 82."

This is the second time I came across this and thought it notable.
Apparently, Abraham Lincoln managed to acquire a wicked Scottish accent in order to properly quote Robert Burns' poetry - and from the references it appears he did so in his younger years - around 1830.
I have come across this in Michael Burlingame's biography and now again in the Sidney Blumenthal bio (which sadly isn't giving many original sources). I have gone through Herndon's Informants a bit but have not been lucky yet.
So fun to imagine how he might have picked this up, isn't it!

Because of our recent move, I won't be able to make the upcoming Springfield tour, but I will be coming in mid-October for a short research trip. I'll be visiting the Lincoln house (of course), the old state house, and the railway depot, and I'll be seeing the outside at least of the Herndon firm and the Vachel Lindsay house (Ann Todd Smith's former digs). I plan to spend most of Monday in the presidential library, but I do hope to get to the cemetery to pay my respects.

Any other sites I should make every effort to see? I'll be staying downtown and will be on foot, and I will be under rather severe time constraints. There's always the possibility of a second trip, though.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4yl_oc...sp=sharing

...rather than "Abe" - I have often read Abraham Lincoln didn't like to be addressed that way. Does anyone know a direct source? The closest I could approach is Frederic Trevor Hill: "Lincoln the Lawyer", page 175:
   
Here's the download:
https://archive.org/download/lincolnlawy...llgoog.pdf

So far I haven't further researched Judge Weldon's statement as he didn't particularly seem to refer to Abraham Lincoln uttering dislike of "Abe".

I would suspect one of "Herndon's Informants" but couldn't find so far. Thanks for any help with this!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ULjCSK0oOlI

Interesting if you scroll down to the information about the 1860 Election board game:

http://delawarepublic.org/post/history-m...e#stream/0

I knew that Abraham Lincoln once lost a wrestling match to a man named Lorenzo Dow Thompson, but I had never read a detailed account of the match. Last week a gentleman named Brian L. Moore joined the forum, and he sent me a most detailed account of the match. Brian is a direct descendent of Jonathan Moore who refereed the match. Brian was kind enough to send this account. Thank you, Brian!