Robert Todd Lincoln --The vitals

[Susan Higginbotham]

(01-15-2018 06:09 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(01-15-2018 12:16 AM)ScholarInTraining Wrote:  or have been destroyed?

I have a question for anyone who would like to try to answer. I think it is accepted by historians that Robert destroyed those family papers and letters he considered to be too personal (or shed bad light) to be publicly shared. My question has to do with Mary's letter posted here. All I can say is how my brain works - if I received a letter from my mother such as that I would not want it shared with the world. Robert had the opportunity to burn it, but he did not. Any thoughts on why it was not destroyed as many others were?

I would guess that he kept it for the same reason he kept the other letters related to Mary's insanity case--as documentation. Or was it found in his lawyer's papers? IIRC, didn't Robert reply to point out that some of the items Mary was accusing him and his wife of having misappropriated had been gifts to them?

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(01-15-2018 09:40 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Sorry the link doesn't work - here's a screenshot:

A single incident involving a group of young boys imitating a circus act, with no indication of whether Robert was the ringleader, seems to me a rather poor indicator of a person's character as an adult.

Notably, Robert himself is the source of this story.