Blog Posts about Mary Lincoln

[kerry]

(03-10-2020 02:40 AM)Steve Wrote:  

(03-05-2020 11:41 PM)kerry Wrote:  As an update, at this point, I am pretty sure the Jane Bell letter was "forged", which would seem to make a difference. It would be easy for a Lincoln buff to see an opportunity to do this, and the wording closely tracks existing sources. It reads as though it is contrived, and a few years ago one Lincoln scholar sent out a call for the original, leading me to believe others have realized this. The same may be true for some of the other letters--this was (and probably to some extent still is) trivially easy to do, and the market for new gossip is always present, and people want to believe. The famous Ann Rutledge letters debacle in The Atlantic was quickly uncovered because it was so poorly done, and even then it got published. Someone with more skill and knowledge could have made a killing in that environment.

If your interested in trying to find out if the Jane Bell letter is a forgery, this citation:

https://books.google.com/books?id=HcYWhd...ll&f=false

says that a relative of Bell named "Mrs Henry Jackson" first brought the letter to light and gave a copy of it. My advice would be to try and find out who this woman was, her exact relationship to Bell, and does she have a "spotty" record or connection to other forgeries/questioned documents?

I can see why a family might want to keep the original of a letter by a relative who knew Lincoln in Springfield as a keepsake and part of their cherished family history. I've also seen forgeries being passed off as a "copy", usually when a forger wants to influence the scholarship on an issue. Only more research on the background of the background of the letter will illuminate which is more likely.

Thank you for passing this on. I ran a quick search and was surprised to find that a relatively recent book about Speed and Lincoln by Strozier raises similar concerns:

https://books.google.com/books?id=hMV1Cw...22&f=false

He suggests it was either a "forgery of some kind" or "astonishingly prescient," which about sums up my opinion. I can see why a relative would want to retain the original, but it's too cute and too detailed. No scholar has ever seen it (I think by copy they mean hand or type written, not a photocopy), and the request that went out by another scholar a few years ago seems to indicate that they tried tracking it down and failed, so presumably they looked into the family. Strozier points out that it was incorrectly transcribed in the Lincoln Herald, so it sounds under-vetted. Can't find that copy of the Herald, which could be helpful in evaluating it. I think we should assume it is fabricated unless better evidence comes up, but I shouldn't have used the word forgery. I don't think it was represented as a legitimate document for sale, but rather that someone, who may have been an actual descendant inspired by family lore, wanted to be part of the story and fabricated something to impress the professor.