In Mary's personal letters....

[RJNorton]

In Jason Emerson's Robert Lincoln bio, the author writes, "A neighbor girl, Sophie Bledsoe, wrote seventy years later that Mary had no nurse to help care for the child or for herself after the birth, so Sophie's mother went over every day to assist. Six-year-old Sophie went along and acted as 'amateur nurse' because she loved babies: 'I remember well how I used to lug this rather large baby about to my great delight, often dragging him through a hole in the fence between the tavern grounds and an adjacent empty lot, and laying him down in the high grass, where he contentedly lay awake or asleep, as the case might be. I have often since that time wondered how Mrs. Lincoln could have trusted a particularly small six year old with this charge."