My New Grandson, Abraham Lincoln Gardner

I’ve been reading The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, written by Daniel Mark Epstein, as part of my lifelong fascination with Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. I don’t know why I and others are so interested in them, but I think it may have something to do with the fact that they are the first accessible President and First Lady. I don’t recall ever seeing photographs of previous presidents, but thanks to the development of photography and the work of Matthew Brady and his staff, we have many, many pictures of the Lincolns and notables of their age as well as of the Civil War. I have heard that there is even a recording, scratchy and poor, of Lincoln speaking; I don't know if this is true. I think that part of the fascination may also be because Lincoln would seem to be such an unlikely man (very poor, unschooled, and born to a mother who was apparently an illegitimate child) to have become president. (Although, perhaps in his era, he was not as unlikely a possibility as someone like him would be now.)

I have even gone so far as to bid through an online auction site on a hair purportedly from Mary Todd Lincoln. I didn’t really want it, but I bid early in the auction so that I could send links to both daughters telling them that one of them would be receiving it for Christmas--and no fighting, you two! I figured that there were people a lot more obsessed than I and that surely I would be outbid. The joke was almost on me as time went on and on and there were NO competing bids. What on earth would I do with it? Ick. But at the last minute, several bids came in and I lost. Whew….

Anyway, the book is very interesting, well researched and has a lot of letters and documented statements from both of the Lincolns and from people who knew them. History comes alive, but without the soap-opera aspect of the book I read before this one, which was so bad that I can’t remember the name of it.

This book was a novel about the life of Mary Todd Lincoln, and boy, did the author take liberties with what little research she apparently did. Part of the plot? Mary Todd Lincoln seduced Abraham Lincoln (on the sofa at a friend’s house, no less-while the friend and her husband stayed out of the way in the kitchen) in order to get pregnant so that he would marry her. The author seems to have “channeled” MTL in order to be able to write her thoughts as she plots to trap Abe into marriage. I realize that Mary is long dead, but it still seems wrong to me to take such liberties with the life of a real person.

I have always thought that it would be interesting to be the descendent of someone so famous (NOT infamous) that the whole world knows about him. I wonder what that would be like. The only lead I have on finding out is the sister-in-law who claims to be descended from President Polk. He seems mainly notable for starting an unnecessary war for reasons that were, at best, exaggerations of fact (sound familiar?)and my sister-in-law seems only interested in feeling somewhat superior because of her ancestor. But the last descendant of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, a great-grandson, died in 1985 and so there are no descendents to protest what history does to their story.

I suggested to older daughter, who is having a baby and seems to be having a problem coming up with names, that she should name it, if it is a boy, Abraham Lincoln Gardner. She says no, but I think it would be a lovely tribute to someone as significant as our sixteenth president.

Abe Gardner, anyone?