Abraham Lincoln Centre, Settlement House of Chicago, and All Souls Unitarian Church.

The ministers in the West had organized themselves as the Western Unitarian Conference in 1852. As time went on, the Western Conference ministers felt they weren't getting enough support from the American Unitarian Association in Boston, and they decided to do more on their own. They appointed Jenkin Lloyd Jones (1843-1918) as secretary. In that role, Rev. Jones became the Western voice of Unitarianism in the American Unitarian Association in 1876. He founded a weekly magazine called Unity to get people to work together to improve human life. A religious yet non-Christian publication, Unity's masthead proclaimed the principles of "Freedom, Fellowship and Character."

Led by Rev. Jones, the Western Unitarians pushed the boundaries of being a Unitarian. They rejected statements of doctrine—"official" Unitarian belief—that would limit a minister or member's beliefs about the nature of God, the Divine, or Jesus Christ. Jenkin Lloyd Jones served on the boards of dozens of social service agencies. He helped organize an American Congress of Liberal Religion, an alliance of liberal Jews, Unitarians, Universalists, and Ethical Culturalists.

Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones began his innovative ministry in Chicago with the founding of All Souls Unitarian Church on the city's South Side in 1882. Jones's inaugural sermon in June of 1885 was entitled "The Ideal Church," which called for an institution to be based on unbounded intellectual freedom, nonsectarian fellowship, and humanitarian outreach. In 1886, after four years of meeting in rented halls, the congregation built and moved into a permanent building named "The Abraham Lincoln Centre" (ALC). 

"We wanted a name that would radiate benignity, humility, a Christ-like patience, in short, a saint of the new order, a martyr of the new day, and such a name we believe 'Abraham Lincoln' to be. So we dare Christen this centre of helpfulness, this home of kindness, this academy of life—The Abraham Lincoln Centre."                                                                                           — Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones.

Rev. Jones hired his nephew, Frank Lloyd Wright, as the project's chief designer from 1898 until 1903 (at 31 to 36 years old). It was Wright's first sizeable public commission. The final building plans were designed by architect Joseph Silsbee at 700 East Oakwood Boulevard at the southeast corner of Langley Avenue in Chicago.

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The Unity Publishing Company and Abraham Lincoln Centre in Chicago, during the early 1900s, were intertwined parts of a vibrant progressive and spiritual movement known as the Unity School of Christianity. Founded in 1889 by Myrtle Fillmore and Charles Fillmore, the movement emphasized practical Christianity, focusing on personal growth, healing, and positive thinking.

The American Unitarian Association relaxed its statement of doctrine. By 1890, many Western Unitarian ministers felt the official statement was liberal enough for them, and tension between the West and New England began to lessen. When the Western Unitarian Conference replaced Jones' Unity magazine with another publication, Jones was deeply hurt. He remained a Unitarian minister but convinced his congregation, All Souls, to become non-sectarian. The congregation removed the word "Unitarian" from their name and returned $4,000 ($115,500 today) that Unitarian groups had donated to build a new church. Some other Unitarian congregations, many led by women ministers he had mentored, chose new names without the word "Unitarian"—such as "Unity Church" and "All Souls"—to support Jones.

The All Souls Church became the leading Centre of liberal Unitarian religious and civic life in Chicago at the turn of the century. All Souls Church was a prominent example of a new kind of urban ministry known as an institutional church because of its emphasis on social and educational programs. Jones wished to create a unique building to express his church's nonsectarian values. He sought a design that would depart from conventional church architecture in both program and symbolism. 

Wright collaborated on the project with architect Dwight H. Perkins. Designs for the building in those years recall the tall office buildings of Adler and Sullivan. Yet Jones's letters reveal that he was an assiduous critic of his nephew's ideas, which he wanted to be simplified for economic and ideological reasons. When he and Wright disagreed on the Centre's exterior form, he turned to Perkins, who revised the design according to Jones's wishes. In 1902, Wright turned the project over to Dwight Perkins and wrote on the blueprints "bldg. completed over the protest of the architect." Perkins saw the project through to completion in 1905. 

The Abraham Lincoln Centre included apartments for Jones and other resident teachers, a nine-hundred-seat hall for Sunday services and other programs, a gymnasium, a library, lectures on literature and religion, classes in German and French, art rooms and spaces for socializing and amusement. 

The Abraham Lincoln Centre, 1913.

Rev. Jones invited leaders from various faiths to be charter members to serve on the Abraham Lincoln Centre's Board of Directors. Rev. Jones included Christians of multiple denominations, Jews, and members from groups as diverse as the Salvation Army and the Ethical Culture Society, asking them to join the Centre's programs. 

When and Why the Democratic and Republican Parties Switched Platforms. President Lincoln's Philosophies were Actually Democratic.

As a settlement house, services included a public library, gymnasium, literature and religion lectures, and German and French classes. Thyra Edwards, an African American journalist and civil rights activist, lived and worked as a social worker at the Centre. She later traveled the world, reporting on labor and social conditions and her treatment as an African American abroad. Edwards openly supported the Communist Party and fundraised for the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

The Abraham Lincoln Centre reveals formal and spatial ideas that Wright explored in his subsequent Larkin Building and Unity Temple. The Centre was thus a pivotal project in Wright's emergence as an architect of public buildings. This property is listed in the Illinois Preservation Services Division's Historic and Architectural Resources Geographic Information Systems database of historic sites and structures.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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The following are the names of the subscribers to the $100,000 ($3,000,000 today) fund for the building of the Abraham Lincoln Centre in sums of from $100 to $10,000 up to February 6, 1902:

A. H. Hanson.

A. L. Thomas.

Alfred L. Baker.

B. J. Arnold.

B. Loewenthal. 

C. B. Trego. 

C. H. Hastings.

C. J. Buckingham. 

C. L. Peckham.

C. W. Greenfield.

Charles A. Stevens. 

Charles Hutchinson.

Charles L. Raymond.

Charles Netcher.

Confirmation Class Alumni.

D. M. Lord. 

Dr. G. F. Shears.

Dr. W. K. Jaques.

Dwight Perkins.

E. D. Hulbert. 

Edward E. Ayer. 

Edward F. Swift. 

Edward Morris.

Evan Lloyd.

G. F. Swift.

H. Botsford.

H. C. Lytton.

H. J. Thayer.

H. S. Hyman.

Ira Morris. 

J. B. Greenhut. 

J. C. Pfeiffer.

J. E. Otis.

J. N. Moulding. 

J. Rosenbaum.

James Wood.

John A. Roche. 

John G. Shedd.

Joy Morton. 

Julius Rosenwald. 

L. A. Carton.

L. A. Swift.

L. J. Lamson.

L. M. Smith.

Leon Mandel.

M. Rosenbaum. 

Merritt W. Pinckney. 

Miss Jessie Colvin.

Miss Katharine Colvin.

Mrs. Adaline Kent. 

Mrs. R. W. Sears. 

N. B. Higbie.

N. W. Eisendrath. 

N. W. Hacker.

Nelson Morris.

Ralph Sollitt. 

S. W. Lamson.

Silas H. Strawn.

Sumner Sollitt. 

Victor Falkenau.

W. F. Burrows. 

W. H. Colvin.

W. R. Linn.

Warren McArthur.

William Kent.

Women of All Souls Church. 

The Abraham Lincoln Book Shop of Chicago, a Long History of Rare Collectables.

Ralph Newman, a master promoter, raconteur, one time Merchant Marine, minor-league baseball player, and hopeless bibliophile, owned a bookshop called “Home of Books” that he opened in 1932. His location was close to the Chicago Daily Newspaper offices and two of their leading journalists, Carl Sandburg and Lloyd Lewis, kept coming into the shop. They became friends with Ralph and turned his interest, over time, towards the Civil War and Lincoln studies. In 1938 Ralph decided to rename his store the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop and specialize in Lincolniana.

The Abraham Lincoln Book Shop was located at 33 North LaSalle Street in Chicago. Then in 1990, they moved to 18 East Chestnut Street until 2016, when the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop made yet another move to 824 West Superior Street, where they still serve the needs of discerning collectors, Lincoln scholars, professional historians, independent writers, dedicated first edition book hunters and casual history enthusiasts.

Among the small circle of Ralph's friends were poet Carl Sandburg, authors Bruce Catton, Otto Eisenschiml, E.B. ‘Pete’ Long, Stanley Horn, Lloyd Lewis, and T. Harry Williams, Illinois Governor Otto Kerner and William O. Douglas the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Famous 'Round Table'

Also among Newman’s circle of friends were the fifteen men who became the charter members of 'The Civil War Round Table,' the first chapter of the Civil War Round Table groups that meet monthly across the country and around the World. Round Table members from around the globe still visit the Book Shop and sit at the original “round table” while reviewing Lincoln autographs, manuscripts, artwork, or rare books.

In 1971 Daniel Weinberg entered into a partnership with Ralph Newman, and in 1984 purchased Newman’s interest to become the sole proprietor.

Daniel Weinberg, owner of the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, November 7, 2016.

As suggested by the name, the Book Shop specializes in Lincolniana, material related to the Civil War, and material related to U.S. presidents. Rare books, autographs, manuscripts, works of art, statuary, and other treasures grace the bookshelves and walls. In-print books, pamphlets, historic broadsides, cartes de visite, and magnificent reproductions of Lincoln and Civil War photographs are available to those who share their love of history. Among their staff, are experts in U.S. history, publishing and bookbinding, art history, photographic history, and handwriting.

Abraham Lincoln Letters and Documents at the

Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, Chicago. [Runtime 8:24]

They take pride in the ability to obtain some of the rarest historic collectibles, their wide selection of in-print and out-of-print books provide a ready resource for the new student looking to start an American history library with reasonably priced first editions of standard works. The Book Shop provides assistance to those developing new collections with their carefully assembled lists of recommended titles on Lincoln, The Essential Lincoln Book Shelf, and on the U.S. Presidency, The Essential Presidential Book Shelf. 

In 2006, Daniel Weinberg holds the second-oldest known photograph of the 16th president. The photo was purchased by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, for $150,000.

In addition to the well-stocked shelves and collecting lists, they supply important services to the history collector, offering expert appraisal services for those who wish to establish the monetary worth of family heirlooms.

The one item Daniel Weinberg says he would save from a fire is a signature in which Lincoln misspelled his name. It shows he's human.

Even though they have about the longest history of any commercial venture in the field, the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop continues to develop new and exciting items for the walls and bookshelves of their friends and customers. In recent years they've brought to the market contact prints of President Lincoln from Alexander Gardner’s original collodion wet-plate glass negatives, including the most vivid image yet of the famous “Gettysburg Lincoln,” and a magnificent Imperial Salt Print of the same view. In 2001 James Swanson (a long-time customer) and Daniel Weinberg co-authored the "Lincoln’s Assassins: Their Trial And Execution."

Daniel Weinberg, a Lincoln scholar, states his favorite book for Abraham Lincoln's biography is Ron White's "A. Lincoln."

Samuel Wheeler, Ph.D. Former Illinois State Historian at the

Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago, Illinois. [Runtime 9:24]

The Abraham Lincoln Book Shop opened in 1938 at 33 North LaSalle Street, then moved to 18 East Chestnut Street in Chicago. 

Today, the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop is located at 824 West Superior Street in Chicago. By Appointment, Online, or Zoom, (312) 944-3085. - ALincolnBookShop.com

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Abraham Lincoln's First & Second ABC School Teachers; Zachariah Riney & Caleb Hazel Sr.

Zachariah Riney, Abraham's First Teacher.

Before leaving Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln and his older sister Sarah (1807-1828) were sent, for short periods, to ABC schools (aka Blab schools). Together, brother and sister attended a  primary school typically found in frontier states like Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. Instead of featuring age-separated classrooms or expensive books or pencils, such schools used a strictly oral curriculum. The "blab" part came from teachers who recited rote lessons to the kids, who in turn blabbed them back. That back-and-forth didn't provide an excellent education (and given that the school charged tuition, it cost the Lincolns dearly to send them there). Still, it was enough to instill the basics in both Lincoln kids.

The first classroom was kept by Zachariah Riney (1763-1859), and the second by Caleb Hazel. At this time, Abraham's father, Thomas, resided on Knob Creek, on the road from Bardstown, Kentucky, to Nashville, Tennessee, at a point three or three and a half miles south or southwest of Atherton's ferry, on Rolling Fork River.

We have Abraham Lincoln's testimony that Zachariah Riney was his first school teacher. This pedagogue (strict teacher) probably exerted the first direct influence over Abraham Lincoln outside the personnel of his own home.

Riney was born in 1763 in St. Mary County, Maryland. Sixty families in this community pledged to migrate to Kentucky within a specified time. The first twenty-five families moved as early as 1785. Within the next ten years, the family group with which Zachariah was associated arrived at the Pottinger's Creek neighborhood near the Holy Cross church. This was the first church of the Catholic faith erected west of the Alleghany Mountains and was built by Father De Rohan in 1792. 

By 1795, Thomas Riney, father of Zachariah, had passed away, and Zachariah was appointed administrator of the estate. From the settlement papers in the Nelson County Courthouse, we learn that Zachariah had a brother named Basil and three sisters named Anna, Mary, and Henrietta. April 2, 1796, the name of Zachariah Riney appeared on the tax list for Washington County as a "white male over 21 years of age." His wife's name was Margaret. Nancy married James Alvey, Mary was united to Clement Gristy, and Henrietta became the wife of John Wathen. 

The will of Thomas Riney states that "the negroes of which he died possessed should not be sold out of the family of his children." Thomas Riney signed the will by making a mark indicating he could not write.

Zachariah was living at the foot of Rohan Knob, on Pottinger's Creek, in 1805, when members of the order of Our Lady of LaTrappe established a colony there. As they remained only four years at the time of this first venture, it is not likely that Riney, who was then forty-two years of age, was greatly influenced by them. 

Little is known about Riney's character. Just a single reference to his early reputation is revealed in a deposition taken in 1817 in which the deponent says that "Riney is well versed in little tricks, that his father was an excellent man he was unacquainted with land titles, that he, as your respondent has been informed, believes Riney was well acquainted with the situation of the land at the time the exchange took place and that this complainant was to run all responsibility in the title and not come back on your respondent." As this was the defendant's deposition in the case, we might expect him to be prejudiced against Riney. 

This litigation was over the tract of land on which Riney was living and which he had purchased in 1811. Part of the farm was initially owned by the pioneer Joseph Hanks and was situated on the banks of the Rolling Fork River. The same year Riney bought the farm, Thomas Lincoln moved his family from the cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born to a farm on Knob Creek about two miles from the home of Riney. 

The log schoolhouse for the Knob Creek community was situated where the town of Athertonville now stands, about two miles from the homes of Riney and Lincoln, who lived on different sides of the Rolling Fork River. In 1815, at the age of six, Lincoln first attended school. 

Abraham Lincoln's First Log Schoolhouse.

It is difficult to learn much about Riney's qualifications as a teacher. Since he was 30 years old before he reached Kentucky, he must have had his schooling in Maryland. There are specimens of his handwriting in the early court records, which show him to have been a man of some accomplishments in this branch of the three R's (basic skills taught in schools: reading, writing, and arithmetic). 

The primary text in Mr. Riney's classroom was Dilworth's Speller: A New Guide to the English Tongue, produced in 1740 by Thomas Dilworth, an English schoolmaster.

Lincoln's formal education was minimal. Lincoln later estimated that "the aggregate of all my schooling did not amount to one year." 

We have the testimony of his grandson that Riney was a school teacher by profession and taught several schools in Hardin County. He can hardly be classed among the itinerant schoolmasters. There are no reminiscences in the Riney family of whether Abraham Lincoln was an apt pupil at the early age of six.

Thomas Riney, Zachariah's father, was an owner of slaves, and Zachariah was obliged to bring suit against one of his brothers-in-law to acquire his portion of the estate in the division of the negroes. This would indicate that he had no scruples against slavery, so it is not likely that he carried any opinions adverse to the institution into the schoolroom. 

He must have been nearly 50 years old when he became Abraham Lincoln's teacher. It is not to be expected that a man his age would significantly influence a growing boy as a younger man. In fact, this first school teacher was 13 years older than Abraham's father.

As Abraham Lincoln would have learned little more than his letters under this first school teacher, Riney likely served the purpose as well as a more highly educated man.

In 1848 another group of Monks of the Trappist Order arrived from France and settled in the same community, in Nelson County, where their predecessors had lived for such a short period from 1805 to 1809. A grandson of Zachariah Riney, affiliated with this group, wrote this reminiscence about his grandfather's last days.

"Brother Benedict's grandfather sold his place in Nelson County about 1830 and bought a farm in Hardin County at a place now called Rineyville, on which Brother Benedict's father, Sylvester Riney, lived and reared his family. Grandfather lived with my father for nearly twenty-five years. He was my first teacher and Abraham Lincoln's first teacher.

Brother Benedict can say that he learned much of what he knows from him, and as I liked him very much, a great part of my childhood was spent with him. When 94 years of age, he came to Gethsemani in 1856, and I went with him. He lived here a little more than two years and died in 1859."

While there is no evidence that Zachariah Riney was ever associated with the Trappist monastery at Gethsemani until he was 94 years old, his grandson, who prepared the above reminiscence, became a faithful member of this colony while still a young man. Abraham Lincoln's first school teacher lies buried in the Trappist brotherhood's graveyard within the monastery's enclosure. 

The resting place of Zachariah Riney should be simply but appropriately marked with a tablet, setting forth the fact that he started Abraham Lincoln on the way to intellectual achievement.

Caleb Hazel Sr., Abraham's Second Teacher.

According to the testimony of Abraham Lincoln, the name of his second school teacher was Caleb Hazel (1756-1833). Like his predecessor, Zachariah Riney, Hazel was no itinerant pedagogue but a resident long-standing in the Knob Creek community. He was very closely associated with both of the president's parents, as will be shown. 

Sometime in the year 1785, Hazel married the Widow Elizabeth Hall. On November 17, 1788, he signed an agreement to pay her orphan children, Elizabeth, Levi, David, and Henry, "the sum of five pounds each," which was due them from the estate of their father, who had been killed by the Indians.

Elizabeth Hall and Levi Hall, both married children of Joseph Hanks, are said to be the grandfather of Nancy Hanks, Lincoln's mother. On January 10, 1794, Hazel signed an endorsement as a witness to a land transaction between the two sons of Joseph Hanks.

As early as December 9, 1789, Hazel's home had become sufficiently well known to have been designated in a road order as "Caleb Hazel's cabin on the waters of Knob Creek." In 1795 he was appointed a surveyor of the road from "the mouth of Knob Creek to Hazel's cabin."

There is evidence that for some time, he kept a tavern or "ordinary" (aka grocery, doggery), as it was then called. On September 24, 1793, an indictment was brought against him "for retailing spiritous liquors by the small [amount] without a license." He evidently continued in the tavern business because, in 1797, he was issued a liquor license "to keep an ordinary at his home on Knob Creek." The year after this license was granted, he contracted on March 17, 1798, by a "written agreement to rent the place for six years to Conrad Suter for $51.00 per year ($775.00 today)." Hazel refused to give Suter possession, as outlined in a suit against Hazel. Further difficulties were experienced by Hazel when he sold some property on Knob Creek to Clement Lee and also deeded the same piece of ground to his stepson, Henry Hall.

It was about this time that Hazel decided to move to Green County. His name disappeared from the tax books of Hardin County and was entered in the Green County records.

In the meantime, four children had been born to Caleb Hazel and the former Widow Hall—Richard, Peter, Caleb, and Lydia. Richard was born on May 14, 1786. When the oldest child was twenty years old, the same year that Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were married in Washington County, Caleb Hazel bought twenty acres of land in Green County, about halfway between Greensburg and Hodgenville. He had probably lived in this place for three or four years.

Sometime after the Lincolns moved to Knob Creek in 1811, Caleb Hazel returned and occupied a one-hundred-acre tract adjacent to Thomas Lincoln's land. In fact, the house of Caleb Hazel was so close to the Lincoln line that the person who later purchased the cabin wondered whether or not it was on his land or the land Lincoln had owned.

Before Abraham Lincoln's school days, Caleb Hazel's wife passed away. When he started on a second matrimonial venture, he secured Thomas Lincoln, his next-door neighbor, to serve as his bondsman. This bond, signed by Thomas Lincoln on October 12, 1816, is one of the last official acts of Thomas Lincoln in the state of Kentucky as the family moved to Indiana within the next month or so.

An endorsement on an early record in the Hardin County court shows that when Thomas Lincoln left Kentucky, he stored "about forty bushels of corn in the loft of the house that Caleb Hazel lived in."

Hazel's new bride was Mary Stevens. She certified in an oath to the county clerk that her age "is far above the demands of the law." It was just previous to this second marriage in 1816 that Hazel became the school teacher of Abraham Lincoln. He was then a widower and must have been about 55 years of age. He had been a South Fork Baptist Church member but was given a letter of dismission about the time the church was divided over the slavery controversy. He probably united with the Little Mount Anti-Slavery Church, which was organized at that time and with which Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Lincoln were affiliated.

We learn from one of the descendants of Caleb Hazel that "he was what the old people called a school teacher. Our grandfather Hazel was a good scholar for his time and had many fine leather-bound books, and I believe they were his father's books brought from Virginia." There are several examples of Caleb Hazel's handwriting in the records of the Hardin County court. There is evidence that he was not only a good scribe but a good grammarian. There is no question but what he was able to contribute to the early educational training of Abraham Lincoln.

It should be noticed that he was very closely connected with the Hanks family through his marriage to Elizabeth Hall. Letters from his descendants claim that the Halls, Hanks, and Hazels all came into the Kentucky country together and were neighbors back in Virginia. There is evidence that he was a friend of the pioneer Joseph Hanks. We have observed that two of his stepchildren married two of Joseph Hank's children, William Hanks and Nancy Hanks, said to be the uncle and aunt of Abraham Lincoln's mother. One of Caleb Hazel's children and a son of William Hanks married sisters.

When Abraham Lincoln went to school with Hazel, he was no stranger to the teacher. Hazel was not only well acquainted with the child's parents, but he had also known the boy's grandparents. The Knob Creek school must have been made up primarily of cousins, and among these cousins were some of Hazel's own grandchildren. 

As the first school teacher [Zachariah Riney] of Abraham and his sister Sarah was at least fifty years old when he taught them, and as Hazel himself was fifty-five years old when he taught the children of Thomas Lincoln, the future president's first formal instruction was cared for by men above middle age.

Hazel's last days were spent in Green County on the farm known as the old Hazel farm. He died on a boat on the Ohio River while on the way to visit his son Peter Hazel.

Some descendants of Caleb Hazel feel that Caleb Hazel, Jr., was the teacher of the president rather than the old gentleman. We know nothing about the scholarship abilities of the younger Hazel, and preference has been given to the older man as the teacher of Abraham.

Caleb, Jr., was married on January 13, 1813, to Polly Atherton but is said to have been living in Green County when Lincoln was attending the Knob Creek school in Hardin County.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.