Correcting a case of mistaken identity

Editor?s note: The following article regards a misidentification of Thomas ?Tad? Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln and William Aaron Harlan, son of Senator James Harlan that was passed down through generations until recently cleared up.

It began will a telephone call from Jane Gastineau, librarian for the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Ind. to Joy Lynn Conwell, historical collections associate at Chadwick Library, Iowa Wesleyan College.

Gastineau wanted to know when Tad Lincoln had been photographed at the Leisenring Studio in Mt. Pleasant.

Harold Holzer, one of the leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the culture of the Civil War and a Lincoln Scholar, and Mark Neely Jr., Lincoln historian and author of ?The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties?, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize for History, had dated Tad?s picture as early summer 1871. Conwell replied, ?Tad Lincoln never visited Mt. Pleasant.?

Such was the beginning of a unique historical research project which recently culminated in correcting a case of mistaken identity.

In 2008, the Lincoln Museum of Fort Wayne with over 230,000 artifacts closed its doors and divided its collection, with three-dimensional artifacts going to the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis, and the ephemera being placed with the Allen County Library. At the time of closure, the Lincoln Museum was the second largest Lincoln museum, following the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill.

This transfer placed in the trust of the Allen County Public Library over 18,000 books and pamphlets, 7,000 prints, 5,000 photographs, 350 documents signed by Abraham Lincoln, one of the 13 copies of the Thirteenth Amendment signed by Lincoln, and thousands of newspaper articles and Lincoln-related items. It included a very valuable item, the Lincoln Family Photo Album.

The photo album had remained in the hands of the Lincoln family until Robert Beckwith, Lincoln?s last great-grandchild, placed it in the hands of James T. Hickey, a well-known Lincoln authority and collector in 1986. Hickey later sold it to the Lincoln Museum in Ft. Wayne.

Then in 1990, Neely and Holzer, utilizing pictures from the Album, published ?The Lincoln Family Album: Photographs from the Personal Collection of a Historic American Family?. It was the first publication of these very private pictures of the Lincoln family.

And it is here that the case of mistaken identity began. Five photographs of the Lincoln Family Album Collection had been identified as Tad Lincoln, including four which were dated to 1871, shortly before Tad?s death. When their book was published, Neeley and Holzer listed three of pictures as ?Tad Comes Home,? ?The Changing Face of Tad Lincoln? and ?The Last Photograph of Tad?.

In February this year, Gastineau and Adriana Maynard, another Lincoln Librarian at Allen County Library, were working with the digital uploading of original photographs from the album to the Internet as part of a massive effort to provide public access to Lincoln materials. It was Maynard who first expressed an interest of knowing more about Tad?s ?visit? to Mt. Pleasant.

Following the request to Conwell at Chadwick Library, Conwell contacted Paul C. Juhl, an Iowa historian and author, who specializes in Harlan family history. Juhl who authored the book, ?The James Harlan and Robert Todd Lincoln Families? Mount Pleasant Memories,? recommended contacting the State Historical Society of Iowa which holds a collection of Harlan family pictures.

Working with Becky Plunkett, SHSI Special Collections Archivist and IWC graduate, Conwell provided the needed information to correctly identify the images. The five pictures which had been labeled as Tad Lincoln by noted historians and used for publication in books, media and the Internet were not Tad Lincoln. They were William Aaron Harlan, son of Senator James Harlan and brother-in-law of Robert Todd Lincoln.

Tad and William were close in age. Tad died at the age of 18 and William at the age of 25. They were good friends. And Senator James Harlan and his wife were close friends of the Lincoln family, with President Lincoln appointing Harlan to be the Secretary of the Interior and Harlan being present the night of Lincoln?s assassination.

Adriana Maynard, Lincoln Librarian, states, ?The photographs of William in the Lincoln family?s collection were not labeled, and subsequent generations of scholars and perhaps even Lincoln descendants forgot about William and assumed the young man in the photographs must be the youngest Lincoln son. The error is now corrected. This boy in the background of the Lincoln story, an overlooked member of the small and tightly knit Lincoln-Harlan family, has finally been brought to light.?

Earlier this month, Conwell traveled to Ft. Wayne to meet with the staff of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection at the Allen County Public Library. While there she viewed the extensive Lincoln holdings, including the materials directly related to Senator James Harlan and his family. Harlan served as president of Iowa Wesleyan University before entering the political arena. Conwell also worked with the Mary Todd Lincoln insanity file and viewed the regional digitization center at the Library. In partnership with the Internet Archive, the center has the capacity to digitize millions of pages a month and also handles rare documents, photos, and broadsheets.

To learn more about the ?Case of Mistaken Identity?, The Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, and the Lincoln-Harlan families, go online to http://lincolncollection.org/collection/ and then click on ?Curated Groupings?.