The Lincoln Museum
Fort Wayne, IN
Originally a private collection of memorabilia owned by the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company, the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is now one of the largest museums in the world devoted to the life and times of Abraham Lincoln. It includes permanent and temporary exhibits, a research library holding nearly 18,000 published volumes and thousands of manuscripts, and the largest museum store in northern Indiana.
Photos and text © Brian Flanagan 2005
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The Lincoln museum is located downtown Fort Wayne, across from the Allen County Courthouse (pictured).
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The museum's award-winning permanent exhibit, Abraham Lincoln and the American Experiment, includes 4 theaters and 11 exhibit galleries, and features hundreds of artifacts and images from Lincoln's era.
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No president before his time was more widely photographed than Abraham Lincoln. His likeness was familiar and available all over the country in the form of carte de visite photographs, engravings, and newspaper illustrations. This is a particularly stern likeness, but nevertheless, it is an example of the photographs that would have been available.
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This public service message, encouraging children to read, chose Lincoln and Washington -- America's least formally educated presidents -- as model readers. Although Lincoln only had the equivalent of a year's formal teaching in his lifetime, he was famed for reading everything he could get his hands on as a boy and a young man.
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Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln married on November 4, 1842. Though the two loved each other very much, Mary Todd had an explosive temper, and they often were quite quarrelsome. After losing two sons and her husband, her instability worsened and her hallucinations and extreme anxiety about plots to murder her eventually led her son Robert Todd Lincoln to put her in a mental institution.
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This painting portrays Lincoln with his son, Tad. Of his four boys only one made it to manhood. Robert Todd Lincoln, the sole survivor, grew up to become a successful lawyer and business man, and served as a cabinet officer and ambassador under three presidents.
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Although it was adopted by the Confederate Army, Dixie was one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite songs. It was even played at his inauguration.
In 1865 Lincoln was quoted saying "I have always thought 'Dixie' one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it. I presented the question to the Attorney General, and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is our lawful prize." -
This is a rare photograph of a "Wide Awake" party organized by Lincoln's political lieutenants to support his candidacy for the presidency. The "Wide Awakes" led torch-light parades through the streets, playing music and carrying fence rails supposed to have been made by Lincoln, their "rail-splitting" candidate, during his boyhood.