Herndon on Lincoln: Letters

[Steve]

I don't know where the exact 01 Jan. 1841 leave date for Speed comes from, but wouldn't stand to reason that Lincoln might try to plan a wedding date before his good friend left.

According to Herndon's Informants, Herndon's interview of Elizabeth which mentioned Lincoln skipping out of the wedding is dated 10 Jan. 1866. To read most of this 1866 account, here's a link to most of it printed in The Hidden Lincoln (undated):

https://archive.org/details/hiddenlincol...n/page/372

Jason Weik had an aborted interview of Elizabeth of the wedding incident which he mentioned in his diary 20 Dec. 1883. The diary account is reprinted (mostly in a footnote) in Albert Beveridge's Lincoln:

https://archive.org/stream/BeveridgeAlbe...9/mode/2up

The footnote from Herndon's Informants says its text (which matches the text from Beveridge's book) comes from a photostatic copy of the page from Weik's diary in the Beveridge papers.

So, Elizabeth's first account is "only" 25 years following the incident, not 40. The Lincoln's eventual wedding took place at the Edwards' home, so it's not unreasonable to assume that could've also have been true on the prior occasion with Elizabeth being more aware of wedding preparations than other members of the community. Are the circumstances of Ann and Mary's engagements similar enough for being confused? Clark Smith was only delayed in arriving in Springfield and Ann rashly claimed because of his illness that she didn't want to be a widow and was calling off the wedding. And then Clark arrived in Springfield on a train and then they got married. Would the food preparations that Elizabeth describe match a situation where the groom hasn't even arrived in Springfield yet? Just because a similar event sort of happened to Ann, doesn't necessarily mean that it didn't happen to Mary.

Here's an image of the Lincoln's marriage record followed by an image supposedly of the returned license that I found on the internet, but I can't determine the provenance of:





Both say the 1842 license was applied to the same day of the wedding. So, I don't see how the absence of an unused marriage license from 1840-1 necessarily contradicts Elizabeth's 1866 and 1883 accounts. (01 Jan. 1841 was a Friday, but I don't know if New Years was a public holiday yet in Illinois then or not.)

I know memory can be tricky, especially after a couple of decades, but there doesn't seem to be any good reason to doubt the quality of Elizabeth's recollections on this point.