Lincoln's Indiana connection: Very real, but also somewhat enigmatic

Kentucky is well-known as the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. Illinois, where the future preside

R. Dale Ogden, the museum’s chief curator of cultural history, shows off a swallow-tail pennant that hung in Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's office, circa 1862-1865. The artifact is one of hundreds which came to the museum from the Lincoln Financial Foundation of Fort Wayne.

nt became a lawyer and successful politician, is known on that state’s license plates as “The Land of Lincoln.”

But Indiana has a most legitimate claim on Lincoln as well – one which the Hoosier State has never fully grasped, according to R. Dale Ogden, chief curator of cultural history at the Indiana State Museum.

“I think the Indiana connection is extraordinarily important,” said Ogden, who noted that Lincoln lived in southern Indiana from the age of 7 to the age of 21. “He was happy to call Indiana ‘the place I grew up’ and ‘my boyhood home,’” Ogden said. “It was here he became a fully actualized man.”

Unfortunately, that story won’t be emphasized – and barely even told – in the otherwise comprehensive dual exhibits opening Friday, Feb. 12, at the Indiana State Museum.

These cased side-by-side ambrotypes of the Lincolns’ two youngest sons, William “Willie” and Thomas “Tad,” were taken in Springfield in 1860. The ambrotypes were the Lincolns' personal photographs of their sons.

“Because we don’t have much to build that story around, we can’t talk much about Lincoln’s life in Indiana,” Ogden said, noting that museums require artifacts around which to build any story. “Unfortunately, when Lincoln left Indiana he was a 21-year-old poverty-stricken farm boy– and 21-year-old poverty stricken farm boys of the 1800s didn’t leave behind a lot of physical evidence of their time here.”

Across Indiana, there is little cultural awareness of Lincoln the Hoosier. The lone exception is extreme Southern Indiana, and especially Spencer County, home of the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, a property of the National Park Service. But even there, artifacts are few.

“No one is more frustrated than I am,” Ogden said. “In the 14 years he spent here, the foundation was laid – splitting rails, walking a mile to return a penny. It is an important part of the story to the man he became.”

Lincoln, who didn’t write much about himself, did offer these few words in an 1859 autobiographical s

Tad, the Lincolns’ youngest son, used this theater box (with a revolving scene) to provide backdrops for his collection of tin soldiers while living in the White House. He charged friends, White House staff and others a penny a piece to view his performances of Napoleonic mock battles.

tatement: “We reached our new home about the time the state came into the union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals in the woods. There I grew up.” Those words can be found in the Indiana Government Center North, near a sculpture of young Abe.

This observation comes from the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial: “The people he knew here and the things he experienced had a profound influence on his life. His sense of honesty, his belief in the importance of education and learning, his respect for hard work, his compassion for his fellow man, and his moral convictions about right and wrong were all born of this place and this time. The time he spent here helped shape the man that went on to lead the country.”

One artifact will give Ogden a chance to pass along some of that information – a corner cabinet made by Thomas Lincoln, the future president’s father. There will also be two store ledgers from Kentucky open to Tom Lincoln’s account showing that he bought calico, nails, flour, tobacco and whiskey. Still, Ogden said, he understands why some Lincoln enthusiasts may be disappointed in this one aspect of the Lincoln exhibition.

“Those people who come expecting to have Lincoln’s Indiana connection rehabilitated – they’re not going to find it.”

But, he added, “people who are really interested in Lincoln are going to want to come back to the exhibit a second time. There’s an incredible amount of material.”

As for the Indiana connection, Ogden believes there is more to come. “Over time, we’ll be able to tell that story.”

- B.B.