Ann Rutledge and Mary Owens

While residing in New Salem, Lincoln became acquainted with Ann Rutledge. The love affair between the youthful Lincoln and Ann is not completely proven. For the past 100 years or so, historical opinion has varied on the existence of this relationship. However, if the actual New Salem residents are to be believed, the validity of the affair was real. Ann was described as intelligent, pretty and friendly. Her cousin, James McGrady Rutledge, said, "she was a beautiful girl and as bright as she was beautiful."

While he was a new resident in town, Abraham Lincoln boarded for a while at the tavern which Ann’s father owned. When one Mary Owens visited New Salem in 1833 Abraham took notice, but it seems his deeper feelings were for Ann. He visited her often, and it is possible they became unofficially engaged with the intent to marry after Lincoln obtained his law degree.

In the summer of 1835, Ann became ill with what may have been typhoid fever. Shortly thereafter, Ann Rutledge passed away at the age of 22. Reports of Lincoln’s reaction vary. Many thought he became terribly depressed. A few of the locals thought he became suicidal. Ann was buried at the Concord graveyard, which was a country burial ground about 7 miles northwest of New Salem. Lincoln visited her grave frequently. Many years later, Ann’s body was exhumed and shifted.

A year after the death of Rutledge, Lincoln carried on a half-hearted courtship with Mary Owens. Owens concluded that Lincoln was "deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman’s happiness". She turned down his proposal. Mary Owens came from a distinguished Kentucky family; and belonged to the social aristocracy of the town. She was high-spirited, quick-witted and well educated. Some of her relatives disapproved of her relation with Lincoln and he too had doubts as to whether he could ever make her happy. Against all opinion, Abraham and Mary became engaged to each other. Then, on a day that Lincoln recalled as the "Fatal First of January" in 1841, they broke the engagement. He fell into a deep depression and finally the two reconciled and on November 4, 1842, were married. The couple wanted a small, quiet ceremony. Sometime before the wedding, Abraham visited Chatterton’s jewelry shop located in Springfield. He ordered a gold wedding ring. Mary and Abraham had agreed that the words "Love is Eternal" were to be engraved therein. About 30 relatives and friends, all hastily invited, attended the ceremony, which was conducted by Reverend Dresser. Abraham’s best man was James Matheny, 24, a close friend, who worked at the circuit court office in Springfield. It is said that Matheny was asked by Lincoln to be best man on the day of the wedding !

A week after marriage on November 11, 1842, Abraham wrote a letter to a friend Samuel D. Marshall. Most of the letter dealt with legal matters but Abraham closed the letter with the following sentence : "Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me, is a matter of profound wonder."

The newlyweds left to live in the Globe Tavern, a very ordinary Springfield boarding house made of wood and two stories high. A widow named Sarah Beck ran the Globe Tavern. There the young couple occupied a second floor room and ate their meals in the common dining room. It was at the Globe Tavern that the couple’s first son, Robert, was born on August 1, 1843. In the fall of 1843 the Lincolns moved from the Globe Tavern and rented a small, three-room frame cottage at 214, South Fourth Street. Early in 1844, they bought their permanent home on the corner of Eighth and Jackson.

Four children, all boys, were born to the Lincolns. Robert Todd, the eldest was never very close to his father. Edward Baker was only four when he died. William Wallace was 11 when he died in 1862. Abraham said (on Willie’s death), "My poor boy. He was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I knew that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die !" Thomas, affectionately known as ‘Tad’, outlived his father. Tad, who had a cleft palate and a lisp, was Lincoln’s favorite. Lincoln left the upbringing of his sons largely to their mother, who was alternately strict and lenient in her treatment of them.

The Lincolns, as existing letters show, were fond of each other’s company and had a mutual affectionate interest in the doings and welfare of their boys. Like most married couples, the Lincolns too had their domestic quarrels, which were sometimes exaggerated by contemporary gossips. Mary suffered from recurring headaches, fits of temper, and a sense of insecurity and loneliness that was intensified by Abraham’s long absences on the lawyer’s circuit. After his election to the Presidency, she was afflicted in spirit by the death of her son Willie and by the public criticisms of her as mistress of the White House. She went through the shock of seeing her husband murdered at her side and then in 1875, she was officially declared insane. She unquestionably encouraged her husband and served as a support to his own ambition. Lincoln attended Presbyterian services with his wife in Springfield and in Washington, but never joined any church.

Early in life Lincoln had been something of a skeptic and free thinker. His reputation had been such that; as he once complained that ‘church influence’ was used against him in politics.

The President was placed diagonally on a bed in a room rented by William T. Clark. It was a small, neat room. A nightlong deathwatch began. Nearly every leading doctor in Washington D.C. stopped by, to offer help and assistance. The President’s breathing grew fainter; although the doctors felt an average man with this kind of wound would die within two hours, Lincoln lasted for nine. He passed away the next morning at 7 : 22 on April 15, 1865.

Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train left Washington on April 21, 1865. It would essentially retrace the 1,654 mile route Mr. Lincoln had traveled as President elect in 1861 (with the deletion of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and the addition of Chicago). The Lincoln special, whose engine had Mr. Lincoln’s photograph over the cow–catcher, carried approximately 300 mourners. Willie Lincoln’s coffin was also on board. Willie, who had died in the White House in 1862, had been disinterred and was to be buried with his father in Springfield. A Guard of Honor accompanied Mr. Lincoln’s remains on the Lincoln Special. Robert Lincoln rode on the train to Baltimore but then returned to Washington.

Lincoln’s reputation and myth had begun to grow before his death and his qualities of greatness already were widely recognized. The Lincoln of legend is Old Abe, Honest Abe and also Father Abraham.