Where Is It?

[L Verge]

THANK YOU for all your efforts, Rob!!

I came across another web page which says the home was torn down in 1918, not 1917 like the other page I read. This page has some interesting information:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"The Edwards home was built in 1836. Episcopalian Bishop Rev. George Seymour bought the home in 1884 and converted it to St. Agatha School, a day and boarding school for girls. St. Agatha’s closed in 1905.

The home was demolished in 1918 to make way for state government’s Centennial Building (later renamed the Howlett Building), and the northwest corner of the Howlett Building now occupies much of what was the Edwards home’s footprint. (Part of the Capitol can be seen in the background of the photo above). By 1918, officials felt the home already had been so extensively remodeled that it had lost most of its historic significance.

“The building has undergone much remodeling since that (the Lincolns’) time, according to persons conversant with its history,” the Springfield News-Record reported, “and there has been some dispute as to whether the room remains in which the wedding took place. That fact and the impracticality of moving the massive old building caused the abandonment of plans to preserve it as a relic.”

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

https://sangamoncountyhistory.org/wp/?p=1611

The article says that Ninian Edwards lived until 1899. Does anyone know if he remained in that home until his death? Also, I don't see any electric poles in the photo.

P.S. Rob, thanks so much for taking the time to search your files.

[Steve]

Rob,
Thanks for looking through your copies of the Barton papers. Very interesting.

I'm fascinated by Barton's description of A Beautiful Blunder being more unimportant than Lincoln's Women. I had to wait several years to buy an old copy of Blunder for under $30 last year, but I was just able to order a copy of Women for under $6. I know cost doesn't necessarily equal value, but I wonder what Barton would've thought if he knew what the marketplace values copies of those books would fetch nearly a century later?

[Rob Wick]

Steve,

When I first read that I thought maybe Barton made a typographical error and meant important. But as I read the remainder of what he wrote, that wouldn't make sense. I think Barton wanted to be known as the best living biographer of Lincoln over and above Beveridge, Sandburg, and Tarbell, and looked at other books as not as vital to that goal as his two-volume biography was. I think that partly explains why the files that deal with the biography are almost four inches thick and the others are much smaller.

Best
Rob

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thanks much to Rick for this grand photo and task - can you figure where he is?
   

[RJNorton]

Is it in a state east of the Mississippi River?

[Eva Elisabeth]

Yes, Roger!

[Gene C]

Thanks Rick for the photo. What dedication
That must have hurt when you got your hand stuck in the door like that.

[RJNorton]

Is the answer Lincoln-related?

[Eva Elisabeth]

Yes, it is very Lincoln - related, Roger!

[RJNorton]

Would the building where Rick is pictured be within 100 miles of where Lincoln tricked Forbes into eating the green fruit from the persimmon tree? (in other words within 100 miles of the road to the Soldiers' Home)

[L Verge]

I'm keeping quiet, but I think I know where he is. I just want to know how he got on that property (if I'm right).

[Eva Elisabeth]

Roger, Google Maps says the place is 135 miles from Soldiers Home. Laurie, please feel free to "place your guess"! (The place is open to the public AFAIK!)

---

Shall I give a hint? Well, if you change a single letter (and capitalize another) in my into sentence (post #79) that will make a hint!

[L Verge]

My guess would have been the purported slave cabin at the Hughes' Indiantown Farm in Charles County, Maryland, where Booth and Herold supposedly took shelter after the Potomac tides forced them into Nanjemoy Creek.

P.S. I don't believe that that slave quarter still exists. I think that the one that Mike Kauffman photographed was actually a later tenant farmer's house on the farm.

With your hints, however, I think I'm wrong. Indiantown is a far piece from the Soldiers' Home, however, but not sure as far as 135 miles. And it certainly is not open to the public. It would have been a stop on our Booth Tours years ago if it were.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Very logical, Laurie - my initial thinking as for the place was similar (escape route + slave accommodation...) but this is an essential Lincoln question (not assassination related).

[RJNorton]

That mileage made me think of trips Lincoln took from the White House. City Point immediately came to mind, and my research shows it's approximately the same mileage as what you said. Thus, I will guess Rick's hand is stuck in the door of Ulysses S. Grant's cabin at City Point. Grant met with Abraham Lincoln (and others) in this cabin. I second Gene in hoping Rick's hand has healed.