Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Historic Resource Study

COMMEMORATING LINCOLN IN KENTUCKY, 1895-1935

Efforts to commemorate Lincoln in Kentucky lagged behind those occurring in other states, such as Illinois and New York, and in Washington, D.C. Ambivalent feelings toward Lincoln and the Union, during and immediately after the war, likely stifled within the state the kind of emotional and monumental tributes that northern populations exhibited following the assassination. However, as the Lincoln Centennial approached, commemorative efforts in Kentucky stirred. Both local and outside interests pursued commemorative ventures in the state; commercial profitability inspired some efforts, and others represented patriotic fervor and admiration for a venerated public figure.

In summer 1861, Kentucky occupied an awkward position in the Union. As one of three border states, Kentucky shared many traits with its Confederate neighbors. Kentucky's population was large, totaling over 1.15 million, and included about 220,000 slaves. This large population in a southern alliance could have greatly benefited the Confederacy, which fought against a much larger northern populace. Lincoln recognized Kentucky's strategic geographical importance and the potential for a southern alliance due to the state's agricultural economy and dependence on slave labor. Lincoln also knew that Kentucky voters had not generously supported his presidential bid. [31]

After Sumter and southern secession, Kentucky claimed neutrality. Lincoln agreed to honor this position even though he knew that Kentucky allowed Confederate goods to be channeled through the state to Tennessee, an action that nullified the state's neutrality. In an effort to win the support of Kentucky, Lincoln ignored these activities. However, after the August 1861 state elections revealed strong Unionist support, Lincoln vigorously enforced pro-Unionist policies and banned all trade with the Confederacy. Shortly thereafter, the Union flag flew over the state capitol and many southern supporters, including the governor, left the state. Ultimately, Kentucky loyalties remained split throughout the war, although politically, the state sided with the north. By war's end, Kentucky had sent over 40,000 men to the Confederacy and 100,000 men had fought for the Union. [32]

Lincoln maintained many ties to Kentucky, both emotionally and physically, throughout his life. Although the Lincoln family had left Kentucky over forty years before the war, many Kentuckians had settled southern Illinois; Lincoln's wife was Kentuckian by birth; and several close Lincoln associates, including his good friend Joshua Speed, were Kentuckians. [33] However, the lengthy and brutal war likely diminished what sympathies Kentuckians felt toward their renowned son immediately after the war. The state's ties to Lincoln had weakened over a period of more than forty years. For Kentuckians, events occurring during Lincoln's adult life both strengthened pro-southern loyalties and forged political and emotional alliances with the Union leader. With this mixed political climate, public and private commemorative efforts for Lincoln failed to emerge until the twentieth century. Unlike most of the South, Kentucky eventually raised several statues and a monumental building and fostered Lincolnian tourism recognizing, beyond sectionalism, the man's national importance.

Following the assassination, local residents directed Lincoln admirers to the Sinking Spring Farm and indicated the knoll where the Lincoln cabin had stood. However, because time had lapsed, and interest had waned between 1811 and 1865, few LaRue County residents personally remembered the Lincolns or their homestead. One sojourner, John B. Rowbotham, an illustrator for a Cincinnati publisher, visited the Sinking Spring Farm in 1865 and wrote about his experience to William H. Herndon. Rowbotham traveled by rail to Elizabethtown and then by coach to Hodgenville. From Hodgenville, the old Lincoln farm lay three miles south on a "good, straight road." Rowbotham sketched the chimney rubble on the knoll that county residents claimed marked the site of the former Lincoln birth cabin. [34]

In 1894 and 1895, interest in the Lincoln birthplace rekindled. The first attempt to memorialize the farm occurred in 1894, when a Major S.P. Gross made a bid to purchase the property, sans cabin. [35] Gross wanted to establish a national historic site that would preserve the Lincoln birthplace just as similar efforts at Mount Vernon and the Hermitage preserved sites linked to other national leaders. [36] However, Gross's plan never materialized, and another interested party stepped in. Alfred W. Dennett, a New York restaurateur, bought the Sinking Spring Farm, also known as the Old Creal Place, from Richard Creal.

Figure 13: Figure 13. The Sinking Spring Farm as it appeared in 1895

Dennett purchased the property, November 23, 1894, with some very specific motives. But whether Dennett's ultimate scheme represented nineteenth-century hucksterism, or simply a personal desire to raise funds for urban religious missions, is unclear. Dennett was a religious man, cofounding the Florence Crittenton Missionary, for wayward women, and other urban missions throughout the country. Dennett purchased the former Lincoln farm through his local agent, James W. Bigham, a prominent Methodist preacher and evangelist, known throughout western Kentucky in the 1890s. Dennett made no excuses for purchasing the property. He intended to build a hotel and park on this historic spot for commercial purposes. As an immediate goal, Dennett hoped to persuade a national Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) encampment, scheduled to meet in Louisville in fall 1895, to visit his property. By charging an admission fee, Dennett sought to regain his original investment. In August 1895, Bigham claimed that Dennett instructed him to find and reconstruct the original Lincoln birth cabin associated with the property. Bigham purchased a cabin located on the farm of John A. Davenport, one mile north of the Sinking Spring Farm. Then, he and his son dismantled the Davenport cabin and used the logs to erect a cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm in November 1895. [37]

The authenticity of the cabin erected by Bigham in 1895,86 years after Lincoln's birth, has been fiercely debated. Bigham's authentication story, promoted in his "lecture, historic & descriptive," rested on the premise that the birth cabin was removed from its original site prior to the end of the Civil War. Bigham relied on a supposed tradition that a LaRue County physician, Dr. George Rodman, returned from a visit with Lincoln in Washington, circa 1861, filled with admiration for the president. Wanting to honor Lincoln, Rodman purchased the birth cabin from Richard Creal and moved it to his farm. Later investigators have found at least three major problems with this authentication: in all probability, it was Dr. Jesse Rodman, George's brother, who visited Lincoln; Richard Creal did not own the Sinking Spring Farm until 1867; and neither Rodman brother ever owned the property to which the cabin allegedly was moved in 1861. [38]

The Davenport cabin purchased by Bigham was described in some testimony as a two story log residence. When Bigham re-erected the cabin on the Lincoln farm from the neighboring Davenport farm, he constructed a one-story cabin, approximating the sixteen by eighteen foot dimensions of traditional, one-room, Kentucky log cabins. [39] Bigham also erected a partial stick chimney. The cabin chinking was mud and the gabled roof consisted of log purlins with wood planks. A central door and one unglazed window opening faced east. Bigham situated the cabin on the knoll above the Sinking Spring that some accounts identified as the traditional cabin site. [40] Bigham finished erecting the cabin just in time for the GAR encampment.

Figure 14: The "Davenport Cabin" as assembled by James W. Bingham in 1895

Fewer than 100 soldiers from the GAR encampment, which attracted an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 participants, visited the Sinking Spring Farm. The exorbitant admission fee and railroad fare proposed by Bigham and the deliberate commercial exploitation of the Lincoln farm incensed many of the veterans. [41] For the next two years, little happened at the farm. In 1897, Bigham dismantled the alleged Lincoln cabin and exhibited it, with another equally suspicious cabin described as Jefferson Davis's birthplace, for a price on the midway at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville. [42] The Nashville venture proved a poor investment for Dennett, but he agreed to contract with Bigham for future exhibitions of the cabins and for the sale of souvenirs. However, by August 1899, after a failed attempt to sell the Sinking Spring Farm to Congress, Dennett stored the Lincoln and Davis cabins' logs in the basement of a New York City Bowery mission he operated. [43]

In late 1898 and early 1899, financial problems plagued Dennett in both New York and California, and he may have stored the cabins to protect his investment. Without notifying Bigham, Dennett conveyed the Lincoln farm property and the log cabins to David Crear, a friend to whom Dennett was indebted. However, Dennett continued to pay taxes on the farm, attempted to sell the property, and retained Bigham as caretaker. [44] By 1901, Dennett concluded his relationship with Bigham and shortly thereafter contracted with Frederick Thompson and Ehner Dundy, two Nashville midway exhibitors, to rent the Lincoln and Davis cabins for display at the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo. Dundy and Thompson also later may have exhibited the cabins at a Coney Island amusement park they operated. Throughout this last period of exhibition, Crear appeared to hold legal possession of the cabins, but made no attempt to claim them. [45] By 1903, the midway showmen stored the logs in College Point, Long Island. However, in transit the cabin logs became mixed, and separating the two buildings proved difficult. [46]

After the logs had been in storage for several years, Thompson and Dundy publicly claimed ownership of the cabins through a series of newspaper articles. Also at this time, Crear filed suit to retain ownership of the farm that Dennett conveyed in 1899. However, the LaRue County Circuit Court decided that the Dennett conveyance to Crear was fraudulent and void. Dennett's attempt to liquidate his properties and clear some debts prior to bankruptcy proceedings proved unfortunate for Crear. The court ordered the Sinking Spring property sold at public auction and the proceeds distributed among Dennett's creditors. Richard Lloyd Jones, an editor for Collier's Weekly, bought the farm at auction, August 28, 1905, for $3,600. [47]

Figure 16: Richard Lloyd Jones, Clarence Mackay, and Robert Collier of the Lincoln Farm Association stand in front of their cabin just prior to construction of the Memorial Building, 1909

Although New York parties dominated the cabin and farm transactions, Hodgenville recognized itself as the likely Kentucky candidate for a Lincoln birthplace tribute. Located approximately three miles north of the former Lincoln farm, the town recognized the advantages of that geographic link. Prior to the 1880s, Hodgenville competed with several other neighboring communities for commercial trade. The town witnessed greatest growth after a railroad line connected it to Elizabethtown in 1888. Between 1900 and 1905, Hodgenville flourished commercially. The town had two banks, five dry goods stores, four grocery stores, a hotel, two flour mills, three saloons, and a county jail. In 1903, Thomas Kirkpatrick, the Hodgenville postmaster, published a pamphlet, "Souvenir of Lincoln's Birthplace," to promote LaRue County Lincoln historical sites and the Hodgenville commercial district. In 1904, the Lincoln Monument Commission, authorized by the Kentucky legislature, sought subscriptions to finance a Lincoln memorial for the Hodgenville town square. [48]

The commission originally obtained a $2,500 appropriation to erect a tablet honoring Lincoln in the courthouse square. An appropriation from Congress accompanied by private contributions allowed the commission to augment their memorial with a statue. Adolph Alexander Weinman, a German native and pupil of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, won the commission. He produced a seated bronze Lincoln mounted on a marble base that was displayed in the Hodgenville square. Local women formed the Ladies Lincoln League to care for and promote visitation to Hodgenville's Lincoln statue. [49]

The town's fortunes rose after the statue's May 31, 1909, dedication. Tourism increased, and the town square grew in proportion. [50] Just three miles south of Hodgenville, the Lincoln Farm Association (LFA) began construction on a memorial building, which quickly overshadowed the Hodgenville effort. However, the pink granite and marble building erected by the LFA briefly catapulted obscure Hodgenville into the national limelight.

The LFA germinated in Richard Lloyd Jones's personal interest in Lincoln. In April 1904, Unity, a Chicago religious weekly edited by Jones's father, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, lamented Dennett's shameful neglect of the farm and commercial exploitation of the cabin. Richard Lloyd Jones, then managing editor of Collier's Weekly, enlisted the support of his employer, Robert Collier. Thus, financially supported, Jones traveled in 1905 to Hodgenville to investigate the property fully aware of Dennett's failing fortunes. Jones quickly retained a Hodgenville lawyer to advise him when the property might be available for purchase. In August 1905, Jones placed the winning bid at the public auction of the Sinking Spring Farm. In February 1906, Jones, through Collier's, announced the formation of the Lincoln Farm Association and solicited contributions to construct a Lincoln memorial at the farm. The LFA membership subscription cost as little as 25 cents and could not exceed $25.00. In this way, all Americans could contribute to the memorial fund. In its first drive to raise funds, the LFA, upon purchasing the "original" Lincoln cabin from Crear, commenced a cross-country railroad tour with the dismantled cabin. Unknown to the LFA, the logs they bought for $1,000 also contained many of the alleged Jefferson Davis cabin logs. Large crowds met the train in Pennsylvania and Indiana and viewed the logs before they were reassembled in Louisville's Central Park for the Kentucky Homecoming Week. [51]

When the LFA attempted to erect the Lincoln cabin in Louisville, it realized something was amiss. Because the Lincoln and Davis cabin logs were mixed by Thompson and Dundy, the Central Park cabin featured a rear entry, two doors, a mantle, and two windows. The logs bought by the LFA appeared to originate from three different sets: one marked by incised roman numerals, the second with black paint marks, and the third without marks. The cabin erected by the LFA at the Lincoln farm for the cornerstone laying ceremonies closely resembled that constructed by Bigham, with one central door and one window opening. The LFA added glass panes and muntins. The disposition of the additional logs is unknown. [52]

Figure 17: Curious Kentuckians gather at the site of the soon-to-be Memorial Building. 1909

The LFA represented a diverse group of intellectuals, politicians, public servants, artists, and business and religious interests. The LFA's motto, "Organized and incorporated to develop the Lincoln Birthplace Farm into a National Park" possessed great possibility. The Louisville Courier-Journal rejoiced that men of considerable wealth now possessed the property and would be "willing to spend large sums to beautify and ornament it in the proper way." [53] Despite the small, self-imposed subscription limit, the LFA raised the necessary building funds in four years, largely by accepting several generous contributions. The LFA engaged John Russell Pope, a promising architect trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, to design the monument on a grand scale. However, limited subscriptions and an embryonic plan to commemorate Lincoln in Washington, D.C., reduced the grandeur of Pope's original concepts. Running behind schedule, the LFA could not complete the building in time for the Lincoln Centennial. Instead, President Theodore Roosevelt and other dignitaries attended the cornerstone ceremony on the Lincoln Centennial, February 12, 1909. Two years later, President William Taft presided over the dedication ceremonies on November 9, 1911. [54]

After purchasing the Lincoln cabin, the LFA launched its own authenticity investigation. Of the affidavits collected in LaRue County, those of Zerelda Jane Goff, Lafayette Wilson, and Judge John C. Creal were most relevant. Goff stated that the birth cabin logs had been moved to Dr. George Rodman's property but she could not recollect when. Wilson stated that he had moved the birth cabin logs to the farm later owned by John Davenport in March 1860. [55] Judge Creal stated his belief that the Davenport house purchased by Bigham in 1895 was a "comparatively new house." Although the three statements contained obvious contradictions, the LFA remained confident of the cabin's authenticity. [56]

Once completed, the Memorial Building would house the cabin for display and preservation purposes. The LFA erected the cabin for the cornerstone ceremony and then disassembled and stored it until 1911 when it was reerected within the Memorial Building. Unfortunately, the Memorial Building's interior proved too small for both the cabin and visitor circulation. Despite lamenting previous abuses of the cabin, the LFA reduced the sixteen by eighteen foot cabin by sawing off the log ends, reducing it to twelve by seventeen feet. [57]

Figure 18: The Memorial Building and steps as they appeared just prior to dedication, 1911

Immediately following the dedication of the Lincoln Birthplace Memorial, the LFA pursued its goal of establishing the farm as a national park. Several attempts in 1912, and subsequent years, failed. Finally, a bill introduced in January 1916 passed through committee without amendment, and President Woodrow Wilson signed H. R. 8351 into law July 17, 1916. Wilson, while president of Princeton University, had supported the LFA's goal of creating a national park. The law established Abraham Lincoln National Park by deed of gift from the Lincoln Farm Association accompanied by a $50,000 endowment fund for park maintenance. [58] A complete discussion of the LFA and the design and construction of the Lincoln Birthplace Memorial is found in Chapter Three of this study.