(03-08-2023, 10:13 AM)Steve Wrote: I recognized that face right away. It's Fanny McCullough, who's family was close to Lincoln. Lincoln stayed with the McCullough family in Bloomington when he was riding the circuit as a lawyer. Lincoln wrote a heartfelt condolence letter to her in 1862, after her father, Lt. Col William McCullough had been killed in battle. It was a precursor to the later more famous condolence letter to Mrs Lydia Bixby.
It should be noted:
"The Bixby letter is beautiful indeed, but it was written by John Hay, not Lincoln."
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume Two, page 737, by Professor Burlingame.
"So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history." -- Plutarch