Sunday, May 23, 2010

The Last Lincolns

I love to read! I especially love to read about real people in American History!
This is my latest find and sent to me by my friend Dennis in Salt Lake. Thanks Dennis for such an incredible book. It seems there is always something new to learn about the Lincolns.
Poor Mary Todd Lincoln............such suffering, mentally and physically.



A young Tad Lincoln...............


I have to be able to get something out of a book in order to read it. I mean....really get something........some sort of knowledge. What started me on this post was my interest in the death of young Tad who was only 18 years of age. I was just reading along when I read this:

Illinois was experiencing one of the hottest summers on record. The day before Tad's funeral, the thermometer in Springfield reached 114 degrees. At nine in the morning, the coffin was carried out of the Edwards' ( This is Mary's sister Elizabeth's home) parlor and transported to the First Presbyterian Church. Fittingly, the pallbearers were six young people who had known Tad when he was a frisky terror living in Springfield before his father became president. The pallbearers carried the beautiful rosewood casket, decorated with wreaths of immortelles, in the church and placed it in front of the pulpit.

Whoa......................I am suddenly thinking what? What is a immortelles? So I mark the page and try to remember to go back later and look it up on the internet.

Well, that day is today! So in my next post you will find out all about the immortelle.


Poor, poor Mary Todd Lincoln........It was the fourth deathbed vigil she would endure: first her son Eddie, dead in 1850 at the age of three; then Willie, dead at age eleven from cholera; the martyred Abraham Lincoln in 1865; and now her cherished son Tad, eighteen years of age in the year 1871.

This is a wonderful book and one of the best reads yet on the Lincolns!

1 comment:

janis said...

Im intriuged. I will put it on my list. You know, Abe lived here in Indiana a while as a child :)