The Shadows Rise

[Gene C]

Read this again, so many things I don't remember reading before.
Seems Herndon finds out some interesting things about Abraham and Ann, but is often weak on follow up questions.

Ann died in August of 1835, and Abraham made one of his rare visits to his parents home "in the fall of 1835, almost certainly October."

"That he was looking for solace in his heartbreak at his old home is a legitimate inference even under the most rigid historical constraints. Particularly from his stepmother would he have sought and expected sympathy, for her sensibilities, as she herself admitted, always 'seemed to run together' with his"

"William Herndon has been faulted for many things, most of them undeserved. But here is a truly grievous omission. In the fall of 1865, in the coarse of his researches he called on Lincoln's stepmother, then widowed but still living in a Coles County Cabin. Incredibly, not a single question did he ask the venerable old lady about Ann Rutledge, never even asked whether she heard the name." p. 129