Wilma Frances Minor letters

[RJNorton]

The fraudulent Wilma Frances Minor letters between Ann Rutledge and Abraham Lincoln have been mentioned in a couple of threads. I decided to do a search for examples of these letters and came upon a few.

Here is a sample of Abraham writing to Ann:

My Beloved Ann:
...I am borrowing Jacks horse to ride over to see you this coming Saturday. cutting my foot prevents my walking. I will be at your pleasure to accompany you to the Sand Ridge taffy-pull. I will be glad to hear your Father's sermon on the Sabbath. I feel unusually lifted with hope of relieving your present worry at an early date and likewise doing myself the best turn of my life. with you my beloved all things are possible. now James kindly promises to deliver into your dear little hands this letter. may the good Lord speed Saturday afternoon.
affectionately A. Lincoln


Here is a sample of Ann writing to Abraham:

my hart runs over with hapynes when I think yore name. I do not beleave I can find time to rite you a leter every day. stil I no as you say it wood surely improve my spelling and all that... I dreem of yore ... words every nite and long for you by day. I mus git super now. all my hart is ever thine.

[LincolnMan]

Certain parts of the excerpt don't sound like Lincoln to me. Did he ever use the words "may the good Lord?"

[RJNorton]

A quick search of the Collected Works indicates Lincoln never used that phrase. Perhaps Wilma didn't do her homework when the letters were concocted.

[Houmes]

(08-16-2012 05:53 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  The fraudulent Wilma Frances Minor letters between Ann Rutledge and Abraham Lincoln have been mentioned in a couple of threads. I decided to do a search for examples of these letters and came upon a few.

Here is a sample of Abraham writing to Ann:

My Beloved Ann:
...I am borrowing Jacks horse to ride over to see you this coming Saturday. cutting my foot prevents my walking. I will be at your pleasure to accompany you to the Sand Ridge taffy-pull. I will be glad to hear your Father's sermon on the Sabbath. I feel unusually lifted with hope of relieving your present worry at an early date and likewise doing myself the best turn of my life. with you my beloved all things are possible. now James kindly promises to deliver into your dear little hands this letter. may the good Lord speed Saturday afternoon.
affectionately A. Lincoln


Here is a sample of Ann writing to Abraham:

my hart runs over with hapynes when I think yore name. I do not beleave I can find time to rite you a leter every day. stil I no as you say it wood surely improve my spelling and all that... I dreem of yore ... words every nite and long for you by day. I mus git super now. all my hart is ever thine.

The late autograph and manuscript dealer, Charles Hamilton, authored a book in 1996 (Great Forgers and Famous Fakes ) with a 37 page chapter on Lincoln forgeries. Several of these pages (with photographs) review the story of the Lincoln-Rutledge letters and it's fascinating reading.

[Rob Wick]

Don Fehrenbacher also wrote about the Minor affair in an essay which appeared in his book Lincoln in Text and Context.

What I find interesting about the whole thing is that it didn't keep Angle from wanting to work with Sandburg on their Mary Lincoln biography. While Oliver Barrett needled Sandburg about it, Angle wrote Sandburg a heartfelt letter on December 6, 1928.

Dear Carl,

I presume that it was you who sent me the clipping from the N.Y. Times of December 5. Anyone can go wrong, but it takes a man to admit it. And when the admission is coupled with such handsome praise I, for one, feel meek and humble.
But on the question of [Atlantic Monthly editor Ellery] Sedgwick's integrity I must reserve judgment for awhile. Frankly, somebody is lying brazenly in this thing. Barton writes that he never asserted to Sedgwick or anyone else that these letters were genuine, but on the contrary, warned him that they did not look good to him. And -- this in strictest confidence -- Miss Tarbell writes that she and Sedgwick spent "several afternoons" over them,. that she was "tremendously interested" and that she "urged him to go ahead with his efforts to prove whether they were genuine or not." She says she went no further than that. When it comes to Barton's word against Sedgwick it's an easy thing for me, but -- well, I can't imagine Miss Tarbell making a false statement.
Anyhow, it's been lots of fun. You're still coming to Springfield this winter, aren't you? Give my best to Mr. Harcourt."

Sincerely
Paul

This could have very easily ruined Sandburg in the eyes of Lincoln scholars and biographers, putting him in the same category as Hertz. Indeed, I get the feeling that one of the reasons The War Years was better received by many than The Prairie Years is because in the back of his mind lurked the ghost of Wilma Minor. Somewhere in my files I have a letter that, if I remember correctly, Sandburg sent to Sedgwick where he mentions that he tried to see Wilma Minor but was unable to find her. It would have been interesting to hear what he might have said to her.

Best
Rob

[Gene C]

While thinking about the Springfield Tour 2014, and rereading Lincoln Legends by Edward Steers regarding Ann Rutledge, the chapter regarding Wilma Minor caught more of my interest in this second reading. I was curious if I could find the articles written by her about the Lincoln - Rutledge romance which included love letters between the couple, for the Atlantic Monthly.

Here is the first of three articles.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...er/304444/

Here is the second
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...er/304445/

Here is the third
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...er/304442/

The fourth article - The Minor Collection - A Criticism by Paul Angle in the April 1929 issue.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...sm/304448/

Haven't read them all yet, but wanted to share them with you. Enjoy!

[LincolnToddFan]

Wow were so many people compelled to simply invent things where this poor girl was concerned?

[Hess1865]

Probably because there was [and still is] the chance to make a buck off the memory of Lincoln

[RJNorton]

(09-27-2014 08:24 PM)Hess1865 Wrote:  Probably because there was [and still is] the chance to make a buck off the memory of Lincoln

Wilma Minor's deal was $1500 for serialization, a $1000 advance on expanding the story to a book, and $4000 upon publication of the book. $6500 in 1928 would be the equivalent of $87,561.76 according to an inflation calculator here. Because the whole sorry affair was revealed as a fraud I am assuming any monies she may have received were returned.

[maharba]

I will look at the long convoluted semi-provenance for these letters, every so often, to try and see points of reality and where it hazes off into uncharted territory. Wasn't Paul M. Angle mainly interested in debunking the notion of an Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge romance? The ATLANTIC series and these letters merely fell into his lap, in that respect. By disproving them, he believed he was extinguishing the reality of the Lincoln/Rutledge romance? I think Paul Angle, only much later, acknowledged his blunder, and that William Herndon was again correct: the Ann Rutledge and Abraham Lincoln romance was indeed valid. I still tend to believe that Eliza Jane Short married first John McNeal and then John McNamar --officially so, in county records. But they were one and the SAME man. And, I wonder why none of the earlier Lincoln experts noted this? Not simply that "John McNamar initially went by John McNeil" but that he appears to have actually married Eliza Jane Short first by one name (McNeal) and then by the other (McNamar). It would be a...smoother more realistic sounding history and genealogy if I am wrong.

[RJNorton]

The only reason I recall seeing for the name change was in a letter from Robert Rutledge to Herndon written on November 1, 1866. Rutledge wrote:

"In 1830, my sister being then but seventeen years of age, a stranger calling himself John McNeil came to New Salem. He boarded with Mr. Cameron and was keeping a store with a Samuel Hill. A friendship grew up between McNeil and Ann which ripened apace and resulted in an engagement to marry. McNeil's real name was McNamar. It seems that his father had failed in business, and his son, a very young man, had determined to make a fortune, pay off his father's debts and restore him to his former social and financial standing. With this view he left his home clandestinely, and in order to avoid pursuit by his parents changed his name. His conduct was strictly hightoned, honest, and moral, and his object, whatever any may think of the deception which he practiced in changing his name, entirely praiseworthy."

[maharba]

Rereading my past postings in Shadows Rise and other material on John McNamar/McNamer/McNamara etc, I come to the same conclusions that there was more 'to do' with John McNeal/McNamer than has been brought out, or more than I have read about. It seems to me that the Lincoln experts have been so partisan pro or con on the Lincoln/Rutledge romance, that most of them brushed by McNamer as something like "a young industrious forthright merchant". One or two researchers zeroed in on McNamer as being cold and calculated. All the timing of his presence and absence and reappearance in Illinois seems meaningful to me. Before he left and during his absence he was on good personal and business terms with Lincoln. He mentions Abraham Lincoln broke into a locked trunk he had left and stole items from it, but McNamer was not really surprised or angered by it. I'm guessing it was McNamer and who must have spoken with a strong Scottish brogue accent (if he wanted to), had taught the young Lincoln a fondness for Burns and other scottish poetry. Lincoln being such a good mimic, it would have been amusing to hear Lincoln reciting from memory Burns poetry and inflecting in a strong scottish 'burr' to the reading. I can find no McNeal/McNeil in McNamer's ancestry, as far as I have been able to tell, so far. And his father was already dead, I can't find the record of the financial problems McNamer had supposedly either run from or gone back to NY to settle up. There must have been other letters, perhaps intercepted and read by an unnamed Postmaster?, between McNamer and Ann Rutledge, but which we will never know of. Was McNamer leaving a bad marriage or romance in his coming to Sangamon IL. All the while he was back in NY, surely he had been interested in one or two young ladies while there? Here is one of the 'fictitious letters' from Matilda Cameron,

Sand Ridge April 1836
"...cinse that Macknamer ***** bak hear he doz not mind pore Anns dieing atall—hes setin up alireddy with Deb. Latimer. Abe wuz rite when he tole Ann she wuz luky to git shet of him befor he shoed the klovin huf. that such a feler wood pres the lif outen her - he is a skunkt o my mind he is puttn pore ant Mary Ann and fambly out as allso us folks.."

In essence, Matilda or whoever wrote that, was nearly correct. Was this person Matilda Cameron even real, if so did she go by Mat, Matty, Tilda, Tilde? Who, close to the original source, was feeding 'the letter forger' the information?

[Gene C]

Let's take care of the previous mess before you start a new one here.

Perhaps you can answer the questions Roger asked you in "He Served in the Place of Abraham Lincoln.. He was polite enough to answer yours.

[Eva Elisabeth]

(01-20-2016 11:35 AM)Gene C Wrote:  Let's take care of the previous mess before you start a new one here.

Perhaps you can answer the questions Roger asked you in "He Served in the Place of Abraham Lincoln.. He was polite enough to answer yours.

Although I second Gene I kindly ask you to first post the source of the following serious allegation you put as fact - I have never read/heard thereof. Thanks. (If anyone else can provide, please post. Thanks.)

"Before he left and during his absence he was on good personal and business terms with Lincoln. He mentions Abraham Lincoln broke into a locked trunk he had left and stole items from it."

[Gene C]

Found this interesting article by Don E Fehrenbacher from American Heritage Feb/March 1981
"Lincoln's Lost Love Letters"

https://www.americanheritage.com/content...ve-letters


also in the Internet Archive
https://archive.org/stream/minoraffairad...0/mode/2up