Extra Credit Questions

[Dennis Urban]

He is holding a piece of Mary Surrat's original tombstone.

[Gene C]

Looks like Otis Wayne Miller holding the __________________

[RJNorton]

Dennis, I am sorry, but that is incorrect.

Gene, you are on the right track.

[Rob Wick]

It's the headstone of Thomas Lincoln jr.

Best
Rob

[RJNorton]

Right, Rob. Kudos.

Thomas Lincoln made a coffin for Abraham and Sarah's brother, Tommy. He also carved the letters T.L. into a stone that would be Tommy's grave marker. Little Tommy lived only a few days.

Tommy was buried in the Redmon family cemetery on a knoll overlooking the Lincolns' farm.

In 1933, while clearing the cemetery site, workers from the Works Progress Administration came upon a small stone buried just below the surface. The stone had the initials T.L. carved into it, and the initials were an exact match with the T.L. that Thomas Lincoln carved into pieces of cabinetry which he made for neighbors. It was felt that this was indeed little Tommy's grave marker.

[RJNorton]

Thank you to Dennis Urban for sending the following note:

"First glance at the pic sure looked like the piece of the Surratt tombstone in the lower right. I can see now that it is not. Your pic also shows a letter T and another symbol to the right of the T.

I am attaching the assembled MS tombstone pieces I photographed a few years ago. This is all that is left of the original stone."

[AussieMick]

Ninian Edwards gave it to Abraham Lincoln.
Later, Lincoln gave it to Herndon.
Later, Herndon gave it to James T. Fields ...

What was "it" ?

(Googling allowed)

[Anita]

Is it this book you're thinking of:

"In 1838, famed American author Washington Irving published this one-volume collection of poems, essays, plays, and letters by Irish novelist, playwright, and poet Oliver Goldsmith from a larger four-volume collection published in Paris in 1825. Irving went on to write a biography of Goldsmith in 1849.

Abraham Lincoln’s brother-in-law Ninian W. Edwards presented this volume to Lincoln, who signed it with the inscription:

"A. Lincoln—
Presented by his friend, N. W. Edwards" (“N. W. Edwards” was later stricken with ink.)

Before leaving Springfield for the Presidency, Lincoln gave this volume to his third and last law partner and biographer William H. Herndon."

https://auction.universityarchives.com/a...8E24C7AB20

[AussieMick]

Hmmm. Sorry, Anita, thats not the "it" I'm thinking of. But you're very very near it.

[Anita]

I chose the wrong book. Is it this one?
"This fantastic volume with amazing associations includes an ownership signature by Abraham Lincoln, as given to him by his brother-in-law, with whom he had a complicated relationship over three decades. Written by a prominent Irish literary figure, edited by one of America’s most admired nineteenth-century authors, and owned by the nation’s greatest president, it then passed from his law partner and biographer to one of the most prominent American feminist writers of the nineteenth century.

Its content includes the letters of a fictitious Chinese traveler in England, whose son Hingpo is a slave in Persia. In one letter to his father, Hingpo writes, “Is this just dealing, Heaven! to render millions wretched to swell up the happiness of a few? can not the powerful of this earth be happy without our sighs and tears? must every luxury of the great be woven from the calamities of the poor?” Though the circumstances of Hingpo’s enslavement in Persia differed from those of African Americans in the United States, Lincoln would have understood the commonalities of suffering and longing for freedom."https://auction.universityarchives.com/a...8E24C7AB20

[David Lockmiller]

In one letter to his father, Hingpo writes, “Is this just dealing, Heaven! to render millions wretched to swell up the happiness of a few? can not the powerful of this earth be happy without our sighs and tears? must every luxury of the great be woven from the calamities of the poor?”

Though the circumstances of Hingpo’s enslavement in Persia differed from those of African Americans in the United States, Lincoln would have understood the commonalities of suffering and longing for freedom."

William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"

O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!
(Orlando, Act 5 Scene 2)

[Anita]

Last try -three strikes and I'm out
Alexander Pope's Poetical Works(1839) https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/r...cts/631052

[AussieMick]

Whoa, Anita. You smacked it out of the ballpark (have I got that right?). Yes, it was a copy of Alexander Pope's poetry.
I was spending some time looking for clues ... Pierian Springs maybe.

https://library.harvard.edu/sites/defaul...er/07.html

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring;"

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;"

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
― Alexander Pope

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism

[Anita]

Whoa, Anita. You smacked it out of the ballpark (have I got that right?). Yes, it was a copy of Alexander Pope's poetry.
I was spending some time looking for clues ... Pierian Springs maybe.

https://library.harvard.edu/sites/defaul...er/07.html

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring;"

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;"

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
― Alexander Pope

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism

Thanks for the question Mick. I enjoyed reading up on Pope. I didn't know he suffered from Pott's disease.

Here's a reference to Lincoln at the Soldier's Home, reading from his volume of Alexander Pope's works to visitor George Borrett. That box of books was quite a treasure Lincoln gave Herndon.

"Herndon told Francis Carpenter that, before leaving for Washington in 1861, Lincoln had sent “to my private residence a box full of his books – mostly political” but including “some valuable literary works—Byron—Goldsmith—Locke—Gibbon &c.”[3] So when the English lawyer George Borrett called on him at the Soldiers’ Home in the summer of 1864, Lincoln not only “launched off into some shrewd remarks about the legal systems of the two countries, and then talked of the landed tenures of England,” but “next turned upon English poetry, the President saying that when we disturbed him he was deep in [Alexander] Pope.”[4]"

https://www.friendsofthelincolncollectio...m-lincoln/

[RJNorton]

There are no photographs of this woman. Various contemporaries described her eye color as:

1. bluish green.
2. hazel.
3. dark.
4. blue.

Who is she?