The Shadows Rise

[maharba]

There's a mystery to me about the Lincoln-Rutledge affair. I can't figure out the dynamics of John McNamar. I have not seen the 2009 book by John Evanglist Walsh, The Shadows Rise, maybe it clears up all the mysteries? It looks to me that John McNamar had many irons-in-the-fire, and was little concerned much about either Ann Mayes Rutledge or Abraham Lincoln. It appears John McNamar was born 1801 in Lamoille County, Vermont. His parents moved to Colesville, Broome County NY by 1820. They were John McNamarah and Lydia Welch. I'm guessing John Sr or both were born in Scotland or Ireland. By 1829, John McNamar was in New Salem Illinois and built a store jointly owned with Sam Hill. And
calling himself (many folks say) John McNeil he became engaged to the very young Ann Rutledge. Then (some stories go) John revealed his actual name was John McNamar and he would return to New York to tend to his ailing father. He had called himself McNeil because that was a family name, back in New York. Next, John McNamar left and didn't return for more than a year, just after Ann Rutledge died, possibly of
typhoid fever, Aug 1835. But John McNamar's father died April 1833
in Broome NY. So, John's story was bogus. And his mother's name was Welch not McNeil, so that was a fake too. I see some researchers claimed that 'John McNamar never returned, was never heard from again'. But the folks in New Salem certainly remember John returning. And soon, he lived over in Menard County, Petersburg, Illinois. John McNamar lived there until long after the War, just before the 1880 census. Lincoln had been listed as a witness or legal on several John McNamar deeds, over the coming years. John McNamar had first married Deborah Latimer 1814-1846. I suppose John was not married to Deborah when he 'became engaged to Ann Rutledge'? The story then goes that 'John McNamar married the widow of John McNeil'. There we have that name McNeil suddenly come up again. But that was the same name John McNamar had been supposedly using, too. In taking a brief look at the residents, I really don't see another John McNeil (who married Eliza Jane Short). Is it possible that Eliza Short married first John McNamar (AS John McNeil) , then he merely legally extinguished that name with the purported death of John McNeil? And remarried to Eliza Jane Short this time as John McNamar? If there really was a John McNeil who had first married Eliza Short (McNamar future wife, later as a widow), what are odds that McNamar would first have appeared in New Salem and
calling himself McNeil, and then later married 'the widow of that John McNeil'?

Then there's the odd arrangement of young Ann Rutledge and McNamar. On the face of it, the girl was so proper and duty-bound, that she would refuse all marriage proposals from Lincoln for a couple years, on the lofty notion that a shady character John McNamar was going to return someday and marry her? It would seem more likely that Ann Rutledge was using the nebulous marriage engagement with McNamar, to keep putting off Lincoln --perhaps stringing along Abraham Lincoln. But for what reasons, juvenile or adult, might Ann have done that? But, in that strained process, and with her sad early death, Rutledge put in motion into the mind of Lincoln a very powerful sorrow which nearly verged into his own suicide? It's like a long running soap-opera that we have missed several installments of, and the actions and motives don't seem to add up.