Let's Not Forget Thomas "Tad" Lincoln.

Thomas “Tad” Lincoln III was the youngest of the four Lincoln children. 

Abraham and Mary's four sons, all born in Springfield, Illinois, were: 

• Robert Todd Lincoln (1843–1926); 
• Edward "Eddie" Baker Lincoln (1846–1850) died of tuberculosis; 
• William "Willie" Wallace Lincoln (1850–1862) died of typhoid fever while Lincoln was President; 
• Thomas "Tad" Lincoln (1853–1871) died from either pleurisy, congestive heart failure, pneumonia, or, most likely, tuberculosis.

Tad was born on April 4, 1853. He was born with some form of a cleft lip or palate, causing him speech problems throughout his life. He had a lisp and delivered his words rapidly and unintelligibly. Often only those close to Lincoln were able to understand him. For example, he called his father's bodyguard, William H. Crook, "Took," and his father "Papa Day" instead of "Papa Dear." The cleft palate contributed to his uneven teeth; he had such difficulty chewing food that his meals were specially prepared. This caused some problems when Lincoln was in school in Chicago. While at the Elizabeth Street School [1]. His schoolmates sometimes called him "Stuttering Tad" because of the speech impediment, which he learned how to manage as a teenager.

He was well known for being rambunctious and full of energy. Slightly the troublemaker, Tad and his brother Willie were often playmates getting into all sorts of mischief. When Tad and his brother were referred to as “notorious hellions” by Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon because they enjoyed pulling apart the law office and dumping books and papers all about the room. 

Thomas "Tad" Lincoln, at 5 years old. 1858

Tad was 7 when his father became President, and the White House became his and Willie’s new playground. Judge Horatio Nelson Taft's children were regular playmates of fourteen-year-old Horatio Nelson Taft Jr., or "Bud," and, eleven-year-old Halsey Cook Taft, called "Holly." Horatio Nelson Taft Sr. was appointed as chief examiner in the U.S. Patent Office in July 1861.

Mary Todd Lincoln with Willie (left) and Tad (right). 1860

Thomas "Tad" Lincoln, at 7 years old. 1860

In February 1862, both Willie and Tad contracted Typhoid fever. Tad recovered, but Willie died from the illness. At this point, Mary Lincoln prevented children from coming to play at the White House because it pained her to hear children laughing and playing after Willie’s death.

Thomas "Tad" Lincoln, at 10 years old. 1863

Thomas "Tad" Lincoln, at 12 years old. 1865

On April 14, 1865, Tad went to Grover’s Theatre to see the play Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. Tad’s parents were also at the theater that night but saw Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre. When news of his father's assassination reached Tad, he began screaming, “They killed Papa! THEY KILLED PAPA!!!” Tad was escorted back to the White House.

Mary, Robert, and Tad moved into the Hyde Park Hotel in Chicago. Robert moved into his own residence by the end of 1865 at 653 South Wabash Avenue (1200 block of South Wabash Avenue, today), Chicago. 

In 1866 Mary purchased a house for $17,000 ($300,700 today) at 375 West Washington Boulevard (1238 West Washington Boulevard, today) in Chicago, located between Willard Court (Ann Street today) and Elizabeth Street.

In May of 1867, Mary rented out her house, and she and Tad moved into the Clifton House Hotel at the southeast corner of Wabash and Madison. 

Later that year, they moved back to her old neighborhood and lived at 460 West Washington (1407 West Washington Boulevard, today), across the street from Union Park at Ogden Avenue. 

Again in 1868, Mary and Tad moved back to the Clifton House Hotel.

Mary Lincoln and Tad, then 15 years old, took a trip to Europe departing Baltimore aboard the steamer "City of Baltimore" on October 1, 1868. The ship arrived at Southampton, England, on October 15th. Two weeks later, Mary and Tad arrived in Bremen, Germany, and from there, they traveled to Frankfurt. Mother and son lived in the Hotel d'Angleterre (five-star accommodations), located in the center of the town.

While in Frankfurt, Tad attended school and boarded at Dr. Johann Heinrich Hohagen's Institute. For a time, Mary moved to Nice, but she returned to Frankfurt. This time she avoided the expensive Hotel d'Angleterre and stayed in the more modest Hotel de Holland and was more frugal in her spending habits.

Tad Lincoln in Frankfurt, Germany, 1869

In the summer of 1869, Mary and Tad spent seven weeks touring Scotland during Tad's vacation from Dr. Hohagen's school. They traveled from one end of Scotland to the other, exploring Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Highlands near Balmoral.

They returned to the United States in May of 1871. From Liverpool to New York, the return trip was made aboard the "Russia," which held the transatlantic record of 8 days and 25 minutes for the Liverpool to New York run, but Mary's trip took a couple of days longer because of poor weather.

On May 11th Mary and Tad arrived in port, and on May 15th, they left for Chicago. It seems Tad had caught a cold during the ocean voyage and was not well when he arrived in Chicago. By late May, Tad developed difficulty breathing when lying down and had to sleep sitting up in a chair. By early June, he was dangerously ill. He then rallied for a short time. As July approached, he weakened again. Tad's pain and agony worsened as his face grew thinner. On Saturday morning, July 15, 1871, Tad passed away at the age of 18. The cause of death was either pleurisy, pneumonia, congestive heart failure, or, most likely, tuberculosis.

Tad's death occurred in the Clifton House Hotel in Chicago. Funeral services were held for Tad in his brother Robert's house in Chicago. His body was transported to Springfield and buried in the Lincoln Tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery at 1500 Monument Avenue in Springfield, Illinois, alongside his father and two brothers. Robert accompanied the casket on the train, but Mary was too distraught to make the trip. In an obituary, John Milton Hay, One of Lincoln's Private Secretaries, affectionately referred to him as "Little Tad."

ADDITIONAL READING:

Mary Todd and Robert Lincoln; In the Midst of the Great Chicago Fire, 1871.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] The Elizabeth Street School was sold and was replaced by the Lake High School building that opened in 1881. In 1889, Lake Township was annexed to the City of Chicago, and the school became part of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system. Several years after being added to the district, The Chicago Board of Education decided that a new building was needed for the school; approving a $7 million dollar budget for construction of the new school in 1901. The new school, located on South Union Avenue and West 47th Place was constructed between March 1904 to August 1905. In 1915, the school was renamed Edward Tilden High School, honoring the recently deceased banker and former president of the Chicago Board of Education. In 1919, the school board decided that Tilden would no longer serve as a regular high school and would become an all-boys "technical" high school, forcing students who didn't want a technical education to transfer to other schools.  In 1960, the school was changed into a coeducational neighborhood high school.

Abraham Lincoln Centennial Celebrations in Chicago and Springfield, Illinois, 1909.

In 1909 many nations and communities in the U.S. celebrated the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. The Centennial Celebration Committee of New York City asked City Hall for $25,000 ($742,000 today) in 1908 for the event. 

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Chicago organized a committee of 100 citizens, who raised $40,000 ($1.2 million today) to sponsor a week-long celebration to outdo the efforts of any other city in the United States as an example of patriotism.

Exterior view of Marshall Field & Co. department store entrance at 111 North State Street in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, draped with United States flags and stars and stripes bunting, with a horse-drawn carriage by the curb in front. Pedestrians are walking along the sidewalk. Text on the negative reads: Lincoln decorations. The bottom left corner of the negative is broken off, 1909. 

Carson Pirie Scott & Co. store at 1 North State Street in Chicago is decorated for Lincoln's 100th birthday in 1909.

Friday, February 12, 1909, was the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. The current president, Theodore Roosevelt, was marking the occasion at the Lincoln Birthplace in Kentucky. Congress was talking about issuing a new penny to honor Lincoln. There were celebrations throughout the nation.

In Chicago, the festivities were elaborate. The city had never been home to a president. But Lincoln had been a lawyer in Springfield, a citizen of Illinois. To older people, he was still fresh in memory.

February 12th was proclaimed a state holiday. Schools were closed, and so were government offices. Most businesses shut down. Newspapers printed special Lincoln supplements—the Chicago Tribune included a full-page portrait “suitable for framing.”

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At 10 a.m., the day’s opening ceremony was held at the Auditorium. The featured speaker was Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton University. He said that Lincoln was a true Man of the People. “The man Lincoln had no special gift,” Wilson declared. “He seemed slow of development, waited upon circumstances to quicken him, but always responded, on whatever level the challenge came.”

The Auditorium meeting closed with a chorus of 300 high school girls singing Civil War songs. Then the audience stood and cheered while the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic marched out of the building.

The day went on, with dozens of events. The First Church of Englewood presented music and lectures. Negro Chicagoans met at the Seventh Regiment Armory to hear readings of Lincoln's speeches. At the Hull House, Jane Addams gave a stereopticon (a slide projector that combines two images to create a three-dimensional effect) lecture on Lincoln’s life. In Crystal Lake, Illinois, a mass meeting was addressed by Major Henry Rathbone (1837-1911), who was Lincoln’s theater guest the night John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in the head.

Everyone wanted to get into the act. Lincoln celebrations were staged by the Hungarian Societies of Chicago, the Chicago Women’s Press Club, the Chicago Hebrew Institute, the Catholic Order of Foresters, the Chicago Veteran Druggists Association, the National Good Roads Congress, and so on.

The largest gathering came at the end of the day. Over 10,000 people jammed into the Dexter Park Pavilion, next door to the Union Stock Yards. They listened to speeches, they sang, they shouted—“they gave vent to their patriotism,” the Chicago Tribune wrote.

The Lincoln Centennial closed, and Chicago returned to normal. Four years and one month later, the Auditorium headliner, Woodrow Wilson, was inaugurated as President of the United States.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS

Another grand celebration took place in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois. There, the Lincoln Centennial Celebration, sponsored by the Lincoln Centennial Association (later renamed the Abraham Lincoln Association), was a great meeting and banquet serving 850 guests in the Illinois State Armory, the same place that was used the previous August as a refuge for negro families seeking safety from rioters.

The Lincoln Centennial Association banquet in honor of Lincoln's 100th birthday, held Friday, February 12, 1909, in Illinois State Armory.

The Springfield organizers had invited Booker T. Washington to speak, among others, but he had already committed to the New York celebration.

Lincoln Centennial; addresses delivered at the memorial exercises held at Springfield, Illinois, February 12, 1909. (pdf)

A memorial tablet marking the old Lincoln law office site was unveiled at 109 North Fifth Street in Springfield, Illinois.

Major John W. Black's Report of the Memorial Tablet Committee:

The undersigned committee of the Springfield chapter of the Illinois society of the Sons of the American Revolution, to whom was assigned the duty of providing and placing a memorial tablet for marking the site of the first law office of Abra ham Lincoln, desire to report that a suitable bronze tablet has been secured and placed in position at 109 North Fifth street, Springfield, Ill. 

The committee beg leave to present in this connection some information concerning the location of the three law offices occupied by Mr. Lincoln in Springfield.

Mr. Lincoln's first law partnership was with Major John T. Stuart, under the firm name of Stuart & Lincoln, and their office was in Hoffman's row on the west side of Fifth street, between Washington and Jefferson streets, and the site of this building is now 109 North Fifth street, where the tablet has been placed.

The second floor was used by Stuart and Lincoln as a law office in 1837, 1838 and 1839.

When the state capital was removed from Vandalia to Springfield in the winter of 1836, the old county court house that stood in the public square was torn down to make room for the new capitol building, now known as the Sangamon county building. The ground floor of the Hoffman rowwas used for the Sangamon county court for a term of four years.

After the election of Major John T. Stuart to Congress, in 1838, Mr. Lincoln formed a partner ship with Stephen T. Logan, under the firm name of Logan & Lincoln, and occupied an office on the third floor of the old Farmers National bank building on the southwest corner of Sixth and Adams streets.

The United States court over which Judge Nathaniel Pope then presided as district judge occupied the second floor of said building.

The firm of Logan & Lincoln was dissolved in 1843 and Mr. Lincoln then formed a partnership with William F. Herndon, under the firm name of Lincoln & Herndon, and occupied offices on the second floor over the store of John Irwin, 103 South Fifth street, which is now the south half of the Myers Brothers clothing store. 

The partnership of Lincoln & Herndon continued during Mr. Lincoln s term of office as President and was only dissolved by the death of Mr. Lincoln April 15, 1865.

Commemorative Centennial ribbons like this one
featuring Lincoln’s portrait framed beneath
a bronze eagle was very popular

Lincoln Centennial, Program of celebrations during Lincoln week at the Chicago Hebrew Institute, 485 West Taylor Street, on February 10-11-12-13, 1909, Yiddish programs for adults and included one for teens and one for children.
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Curiously, the 1909 Lincoln Centennial Celebration banquet in Springfield excluded negroes—the infamous Springfield race riots had erupted on August 14, 1908, just months before—and the banquet occurred during the temperance movement. Yet the Springfield affair was extravagant and included wine, but it was reported that there would be at least six dry tables. Guests would show their temperance inclinations by turning glasses upside down.

ADDITIONAL READING: 
   How Negroes in early Springfield Influenced Lincoln's views on race.
   Abraham Lincoln – Friend of the Jewish People.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.