Mary Lincoln Extra Credit Questions

[AussieMick]

Well done, Roger!

[L Verge]

(07-25-2018 04:22 PM)AussieMick Wrote:  Well done, Roger!

Okay, who was Charles Dallman, Jr.?

[AussieMick]

Laurie, he was a poor little mite. They were neighbours in Springfield. His mother, Harriet, gave birth to him not long after Tad was born. She was very ill and could not feed him herself so Mary Lincoln offered to 'wet nurse' him. Unfortunately he did not live to adulthood.

( I sourced my story form "Lincoln's Springfield Neighborhood" by Bonnie E Paull and Richard E. Hart)

[L Verge]

(07-25-2018 10:13 PM)AussieMick Wrote:  Laurie, he was a poor little mite. They were neighbours in Springfield. His mother, Harriet, gave birth to him not long after Tad was born. She was very ill and could not feed him herself so Mary Lincoln offered to 'wet nurse' him. Unfortunately he did not live to adulthood.

( I sourced my story form "Lincoln's Springfield Neighborhood" by Bonnie E Paull and Richard E. Hart)

Thanks for edumacating me. I haven't heard the term "wet nurse" in years. My mother needed a wet nurse for the first year or so of her life back in 1914.

[Eva Elisabeth]

According to the author Abraham Lincoln served as courier to carry the baby to Mary, and that "...the baby did not survive past early childhood. When the family returned from the funeral, the Lincolns again were there for them with a generous supper brought by Mr. Lincoln on one of Mary's finest silver trays."

[AussieMick]

Not having been a mother (!!!), its an effort to put myself in Mary's place. But it seems an extraordinary thing to do. I know that wet-nursing did sometimes happen. But I'd always thought that it was where a woman who was extremely poor and had recently had her own baby (which had perhaps died, but not necessarily) and she basically "rented" out her own breast-feeding capability to another new mother who was unable to feed her own baby. Queen Victoria apparently found the idea of feeding her babies revolting so she hired a wet-nurse.

But anyone (male or female) that has had a baby knows how demanding they are. I suppose Mary was not breast-feeding young Dallman quite as often as Tad (in other words throughout the day and night) ... but even so the effort would have been considerable. There would also have been (for me anyway and maybe stupidly) the thought that she was putting her own child at some risk through cross-infection and maybe her own baby was not getting as much milk (ok, thats stupid ... but still)... well, its quite a thing to have done.

[Eva Elisabeth]

And then ask a Holstein-Frisian...

[AussieMick]

Well yes Eva a cow's milk would have been a possibility, but hardly the best especially in those days.

Actually your comment reminded me of a related fact. I do have a (very little) farming background and did think of instances where a calf (or whatever) is 'fostered' with another 'mother' of the same species whose calf had died. I think some farmers would use the afterbirth of the calf that died (yuck) to cover the live new-born (which might have lost its own mother or it may have been shunned by her or she may have had a multiple birth or .... ) and present it to the 'mother' .

[Eva Elisabeth]

I'm afraid I was thinking from the viewpoint of the cow how she feels to have to "breastfeed" us all to the extreme...
https://www.farmanddairy.com/news/holste...92855.html

[L Verge]

As for Queen Victoria's shying away from breastfeeding: She produced a brood of children, but in letters that she wrote to her daughter, she has little good to say about motherhood and children in general. A few months back, I read an article online (forget where) that carried excerpts of those letters. In the 20th century, she might have been the first in line to experiment with "the pill..."

I read a different article, but this one will do http://www.victoriana.com/doors/queenvictoria.htm

[Eva Elisabeth]

https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproje...-cambridge

[RJNorton]

Mary referred to a person as "troublesome sunshine." Who was this person?

[Eva Elisabeth]

Tad?!

[RJNorton]

Excellent, Eva. Yes, it was a reference to Tad.

Tad was called to Washington to testify in the John Surratt trial in 1867. Mary did not need to go as Robert was in Washington to take care of Tad. Mary missed Tad, and she wrote to Elizabeth Emerson Atwater:

"I am anxiously awaiting the return of my sons - you may be sure, I miss my little troublesome sunshine Taddie every hour..."

[Eva Elisabeth]

I've always found the word "troublesome" remarkable, one of the few hints she was likely aware of his (educational) deficiencies and not totally ignorant. There aren't many similar "confessions", no?