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The Abraham Lincoln Collections at the Indiana Historical Society
Darrel E. Bigham
| Most Americans consider Illinois the "land of Lincoln," due in part to the motto added to that state's automobile license plates during the sesquicentennial of his birth in 1959. Some also know that he was born in Kentucky. Few understand that he spent his formative years, ages seven to twenty-one, in Spencer County, Indiana. Most biographers and historians have reinforced that ignorance either by overlooking Lincoln's life as a Hoosier or by giving it short shrift. For example, the author of the best contemporary biography of Lincoln—winner of the 2004 Lincoln Prize—devotes just a few pages to the Indiana years.1 |
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Fortunately, Hoosiers have a wealth of Lincoln resources. The Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in Spencer County, a National Park Service site since 1962, provides high-quality interpretation of the Lincoln family and its years in Indiana (1816–1830). Nearby, Lincoln State Park and Gentryville house other sites associated with Lincoln's Indiana years. Three Indiana repositories have Lincoln collections: the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington; the Indiana Historical Society (IHS) in Indianapolis; and the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne (which holds the second largest collection of Lincoln materials in the United States after the Library of Congress). |
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In 2003 one of these repositories made a significant addition to its collection. The Indiana Historical Society already possessed a Lincoln collection of more than 300 objects, including a leaf from a sum book Lincoln used as a boy, manuscripts from his presidential years, and written reminiscences of him by those who knew him as a child and young man. Thanks to a $2.9 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, the society has now acquired approximately 800 additional items from two Lincoln collectors. The Jack Smith Lincoln Graphics Collection, by far the larger of the two, consists of photographs, lithographs, engravings, and busts of Lincoln. Collected by Jack L. Smith of South Bend and focused on 1860–1865 and the post-assassination years, these items comprise one of the most important groupings of Lincoln images anywhere. The grant also enabled the IHS to acquire the Daniel R. Weinberg Lincoln Conspirators Collection, which consists of photographs, manuscripts, books, pamphlets, and newspapers relating to the president's assassination. Weinberg, owner of the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago, sold the most significant artifact of the entire acquisition: the original collodion wet-plate negative of a photograph of Lincoln by Alexander Gardner. One of the best-known Lincoln images, it was taken eleven days before the president delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. |
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According to IHS President and CEO Salvatore Cilella, Jr., the new purchases resulted from "incredible coincidences." Cilella visited Weinberg in the summer of 2002 to encourage him to participate in the society's Rare Book and Map Fair as well as to purchase a copy of Weinberg's recently published book on Lincoln's assassins. From that visit came the opportunity to purchase the assassination materials. Weinberg also encouraged Cilella to meet with Smith, whose huge collection of Lincolniana covered every wall in his home, the walls of his office, and the hallways at his corrugated paper box manufacturing company, but also filled his private, two-story gallery in downtown South Bend. Smith, who had experienced a serious heart attack that summer, later recalled to a reporter that he thought he should "'do something about this collection' ... [H]e did not want his collection 'ending up in a museum or a school ... because they usually buy these things and show them once ... When Sal started talking to me about what the historical society's plans were for the collection and how they are going to use it, and the idea of keeping the collection together as one entity, it seemed very intriguing.'"2 |
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