Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

[LincolnToddFan]

Speaking of Rutledge family letters....

We know that for two or three months in the winter of 1834-1835 Lincoln was away from New Salem, attending the state legislature in Vandalia. Why has not a single, solitary letter ever been found from A.L. to the woman he was allegedly so deeply in love with by then and planning to marry? We are told by Albert Beveridge in his Life of Lincoln that the Rutledges were a family who wrote lots of letters and kept all the ones they received, and that this was a tradition in that family(Vol I, pgs 150-151)

In fact, not only are there no letters from AL to AR while she was alive, but if the Rutledges were the kinsmen of the woman AL loved to distraction why did he never keep in touch with them after he left New Salem? They came within a hair's breadth of becoming his in-laws.(if the engagement story is true) There were presumably deaths in the family after Ann died, births, weddings.... yet there are no letters of condolence or congratulations, no visits from Lincoln to them, no...nothing over the years? Nor in fact, FROM the Rutledges to AL? I understand that he was unlikely to have kept in touch as much with them after his wedding. But what about the seven years that elapsed between the time he left New Salem and his marriage to Mary?

And if Ann was sick for several weeks before she died, why do we read of only one visit from her "fiancé"?

I am not one of the ones who believes that there was no romance between the two...there probably was. But these things have always struck me as odd, odd, odd.