Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation Owes Big $$$

[Steve]

(05-22-2018 02:13 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Steve (and everyone), other than what Clara Waller and John W. Allen maintained, have you come across any credible evidence that Abraham Lincoln and William Waller ever even met each other?

From my view, I cannot think of any reason why Abraham Lincoln would give this guy his hat.

(maybe my aging brain is missing something here)

I haven't come across any evidence at all that Lincoln and William Waller met. If Lincoln ever personally gave him his hat, it would have to have been in Washington DC. and there's no evidence Waller ever went there. It's not impossible that he did; it just seems unlikely to me that a farmer in Illinois with several small children, who's been threatened, would travel for a visit to DC for no apparent reason.

According to her findagrave page Clara only married Ebert Waller in 1948, over fifty years after William Waller died:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/4639...-dee-frank

Ebert was only born in 1870. So we're only getting a third-hand account from Clara, if the hat actually belonged to William Waller. There's not even an account by Ebert himself, that his father was given the hat by Lincoln.


My gut tells it's most likely that Ebert himself bought the hat second-hand, perhaps from somebody, an estate sale, or antique shop in Springfield sometime when he was a state legislator and Clara somehow confused the stories of Ebert's father during the war with the hat.