59 Unknown Lincoln Documents Found

A researcher plowing through papers at the National Archives in Washington struck gold--in Abraham Lincoln’s handwriting.

John Lupton, looking into Lincoln’s pre-presidential life as a pension attorney, discovered 59 previously unknown records signed by Lincoln, historians said last month.

It was a stunning find based on sheer volume, the scholars said.

“For Lincoln people, I think it could be the equivalent of King Tut’s tomb. To find 59 in one place is incredible,” said Harold Holzer, chief communications officer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He has written nine books about Lincoln.

The documents dated from 1844 to 1859, the year before Lincoln was elected President. They were signed Treasury Department affidavits and receipts for federal pension money obtained for veterans or their survivors.

Lincoln would receive payments from the federal pension agent in Springfield and forward them to clients after signing receipts and statements saying he had no interest in the money.

“In a scholarly sense, this is extremely significant because this is an aspect of Lincoln’s legal career that we had no idea existed before,” said Lupton, a research associate for the Lincoln Legal Papers, a Springfield-based program that documents Lincoln’s career as an attorney.

Lupton, who lives in Shelbyville, said in a telephone interview from Washington that another researcher tipped him off that Treasury records might be a mother lode of information.

The records already had helped the other researcher to document Lincoln’s success in securing a pension for Revolutionary War widow Rebecca Thomas in 1846.

Fifty-two documents contain the usual signature of “A. Lincoln.” Five contain full signatures of “Abraham Lincoln”--rare in the years before he became the 16th President. Even rarer are two signatures of “Abram Lincoln.”

“Abraham Lincoln had his own personal pique: He didn’t like to be called Abraham. He preferred that you either called him Lincoln or Mr. Lincoln,” said Frank J. Williams, a Providence, R.I., lawyer and probate judge who is collaborating with Holzer on a book about Lincoln’s law career.

The bulk of Lincoln’s legal career was devoted to trial practice.

Early Lincoln presidential campaign biographies called him Abram.

In five years of research, the Lincoln Legal Papers has uncovered 160 Lincoln papers at courthouses throughout Illinois. Many were thought lost, Lupton said, because autograph hunters scoured courthouses after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865.