Robert Todd Lincoln --The vitals

[kerry]

I can't get the website to work, but a cached page I found on Google says:


Matilda Edwards Strong is buried next to her husband, Newton D. Strong, under an elaborate marble headstone and footstone.

Matilda was important to Lincoln, and her family claimed he had proposed to her, said local historian Michelle Lynch, a board member at both the cemetery and Historical Society of Berks County.

Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, also mentioned the proposal in an early biography of the president, but Lynch said there's nothing to substantiate it. [?]

"That he admired her beauty and that the two flirted seems likely," she said. "That this flirting was the cause of the break in his engagement with Mary Todd is possible. That Lincoln actually proposed to Matilda, well, who knows?"

Matilda in Springfield

Lynch said that Matilda, the daughter of Illinois state Rep. Cyrus Edwards, was about 18 in 1840 when she went to stay with a relative, Ninian W. Edwards, in Springfield, Ill.

Ninian's wife, Elizabeth Todd, was one of Springfield's most gracious hostesses and her sister Mary also was staying with them.

Lincoln was courting Mary, to whom he had become engaged in 1840. Lincoln and Matilda would have seen each other often at the home and at social events.

Matilda was willowy, blond and refined. Mary Todd was shorter and plumper yet vivacious. Local gentlemen fell over themselves to please these two ladies.

"Imagine adolescent girls, for this is all they really were, and you can soon imagine these rival belles taking a dislike to one another," Lynch said.

How serious this rivalry was and whether Matilda was really interested in Lincoln or just trying to irritate Mary is unknown, the historian said.

"But on Jan. 1, 1841, Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd broke off their engagement," Lynch said. "Mary Todd later blamed this breakup on Matilda's interference."

Other historians have written that another complication was that Lincoln's best friend, Joshua Speed, was in love with Matilda and also proposed to her.

Lincoln and Speed once shared a bed while starting out as lawyers, but Lynch said this was a common practice that helped bachelors save money and that implications that either man was homosexual are false.

Historians have said Matilda rejected Speed and later rejected Lincoln, some say because he was about twice her age. But Lynch noted the man she did marry was born the same year that Lincoln was.

...

A young lawyer named William Strong moved to Reading in 1833 after graduating from Yale University and convinced his younger brother, Newton D. Strong, to join him two years later.

Newton wasn't as impressed with Reading. He moved to Illinois, where he met Matilda.

"Flirt that Matilda apparently must have been, it seems she led Newton on enough for him to have described himself in his 1840 Yale class reunion program as 'about to be married,' " Lynch said.

At the same time, Matilda was flirting with others and possibly breaking up a more famous engagement, Lynch said.

Matilda and Newton married at last in 1844. They moved back to Reading in about 1847 after Newton's brother was elected to serve Berks County in Congress. Newton oversaw his brother's local law practice.

William Strong went on to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1870 to 1880.

Matilda never had children but moved in a social circle with wives of attorneys and government officials. She also joined a social society and helped at a soup kitchen on Franklin Street, Lynch said.

In 1848, Newton and Matilda went to Washington to visit William while Lincoln also was serving in Congress.

...

On Feb. 5, 1851, while on a trip to Philadelphia, Matilda collapsed on a street and died suddenly.

"I've speculated that she may have had a brain aneurysm," Lynch said. "What else makes a seemingly healthy 29-year-old woman drop over dead?"