A Tour of the Lincoln Home with Curator Susan Haake (Part 1)

welcome today is May 9th it's a Thursday 2019 my name is Mark Kapoor I'm the director of oral history with the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and today is an exciting day for me because I get to talk to Susan Hague mm-hmm how are you Susan I'm doing well thank you how are you tell me what your job is I'm the curator here at the Lincoln home that means I take care of the house and all of the contents the artifacts that belong to the Lincoln as well as as other pieces that we have in the collection let's start with a little bit about the the history and the origins of house itself the first part of the house was built in 1839 it was built as a one-and-a-half story cottage so that full second story you see was not there it was built by the Reverend Charles dresser for he and his family he was a local Episcopal minister here in town and he actually performed the wedding ceremony for Abraham and Mary Lincoln in 1842 they almost got married here in the house but at the last minute it was switched to Mary's sister's house where Mary was living at the time so the house was about five years old when the Lincoln's bought it they had the contract in January of 1844 and they moved in May 2nd 1844 so just a few days ago okay Susan how about we head on inside let's go inside all right come on in thank you sir mm-hmm what I'd like to start with Susan there's a little bit about the entryway is that every room in this building is a little bit distinct you so what comes to mind about this rug for you the first thing you see when you walk in the door is the stairwell and the newel post and handrail on that stairwell were the ones that were used by the Lincoln's when they lived here that doorbell the doorbell yes the doorbell is as far as we know original to the house um it was a very simple spring and pulley system you can see that the Bell is hooked up to some wires that normally there'd be a wire here that attached to a pole outside so you just would pull on that button and it would cause the doorbell to ring was that typical of the day very typical of the day and obviously the first thing that they would be concerned about for guests and probably for themselves or Mary would be concerned is taking the hat and coat off and using the coat rack here correct and the coat rack did belong to the Lincoln's as well probably one of the first things that they purchased when they moved into the house it's a Gothic Revival style piece of furniture which is very popular in the 1840s here in the Midwest and they moved in in 1844 175 years ago and so that would have been one of the first things they would have bought the other thing they would have done if you had a particularly muddy feet because the streets were just dirt or mud the chair is there so that you could sit down take off your muddy shoes and put on the house slippers that you could carried with you in a bag so I bet Mary especially was concerned with that Hashem is very very concerned about that especially with some of the gentlemen and their big muddy feet yeah okay well let's move on to the parlor all right let's do that Susan the front parlor before we get any in details here I've got a couple general questions first of all how do we know that this is relatively accurate to what the Lincoln would have known at their time we've got a couple of sources that tell us a little bit about the house the one thing we don't know about for sure are colors but we do have a drawing from Frank Leslie's Illustrated newspaper that was done right after mr. Lincoln was nominated in May of 1860 and that shows what the two parlors look like as well as a sitting room across the hall we also have one photograph taken the day of Lincoln's funeral of the back parlor that gives us a nice clear view of the wallpaper also okay what I'm looking at here I don't see the wallpaper Illustrated at least what my design of the wallpaper would be we think the artist ran out of time because this is a pretty detailed wallpaper but like so we've got the photograph from 1865 and we know that the tenants hadn't changed the wallpaper at that point so we're pretty sure this is what the wallpaper looked like there's flexible it's a little bit nicer wallpaper wallpaper was very fashionable had been for over a hundred years a lot of it was coming from France or China those are the two main exporters and have this little the little flecks of gold in it helps to reflect the light the Lighting's pretty low in these days so anything you can have to help reflect the light a little bit more so is it just gold paint or is it gold leaf this is gold paint it might have been gold leaf back then but that would have been pretty expensive and married was pretty economical when she was living here so this probably was just gold paint okay well the other thing you just mentioned it was the lighting now we've got good lighting here now yes something they would have probably never experienced what was the lighting they would have had in the rooms at the time lighting at the time was candles or whatever you could get off with the fireplaces in the stoves there's no record of the Lincoln's buying anything other than maybe a little bit of whale oil which was another form of lighting but again very dim no kerosene natural gas lighting did not come here until the 1870s long after the Lincoln's were here electricity didn't get here until the early 1900s so we're we're a ways away from bright lights the other curiosity in the room here is the fireplace because it doesn't really look like the fireplace I would have expected to see no this is the popular thing to do at the time was as you were converting to the more modern technology was you would just leave your fireplace mantel and attached your fireplace straight to that this is a wood-burning fireplace a wood-burning stove I should say and very popular parlor stove of the time the original parlor stoves actually up in Dearborn Michigan at Greenfield Village but this is a pretty close match compared to the the drawing and probably was much more efficient and heating the room at a standard rate much more efficient but yeah you didn't need nearly as much wood to get a lot more heat and it didn't all go up the chimney like a fireplace and again Mary Mary's pretty economical here she doesn't have a lot of money to to play with so for example the horsehair furniture looks very elegant but the horsehair is very durable it it really wears like iron practically so she had a very practical street to her as well yeah I guess it's I don't know the first thing about horsehair furniture looks awfully smooth in terms of the covering of it obviously the the craftsman would have worked with it quite a bit yes yes it's well it's very smooth in one direction if you go with the NAP it's very smooth you go against it it's like velcro was it subtle or it was a pretty stiff I could be pretty stiff depending on the weave and if there was a pattern you could get a pattern and if these don't happen to have it one other thing I wanted to ask you about in this room is the curtains or drapes I don't know what term would have been used at the time either is fine and they also looked very heavy and ornate and with you when you talk about not having very much light it strikes me that that's not helping the situation well there's a couple of reasons for the heavy drapes because this was not used a lot these rooms were not used a lot he would close the drapes to keep the furniture and the carpet from fading while there was a the chemical dyes were first starting to be used so they were a little more stable there still was a lot of vegetable dye in use so and that fades very quickly in sunlight so you close up the drapes one this room isn't in use and keep it dark much like we still do now just to help with the fading okay well let's move on to the next parlor that we've oh all right Susan were now in their rear parlor what would the family have called it at the time rear parlor back parlor when they first moved into the house though this room didn't exist the front parlor was here as well as a sitting room and then a large kitchen off the back but the sleeping lofts upstairs were only about six foot six at their highest point and I think mr. Lincoln got tired of hitting his head so they cut off the kitchen wing and moved it six feet to the south and built this room on actually as a bedroom initially so this was the bedroom where at least three of the boy well the three younger boys were born here little Eddie their second son died in this room shortly right after his fourth birthday and they had the funeral in the front parlor so at the time they didn't have these big double doors that was added when they put the full second-floor moves all the bedrooms upstairs and made this a much grander space when did that addition happen the main second floor started in 1855 and then they finished by 1866 1856 sorry putting on the full second floor that's a long time in construction for somebody like Mary to have to put up with all of it I would think she did but I think she enjoyed it mr. Lincoln was gone a lot of the time so she was basically the general contractor while he was gone which is a pretty big deal okay well one of the things that you mentioned when we first went through here was an existence of a well there was a well like I said but in this this room wasn't here the well was kind of back in this area there was a porch and you'd walk out from the kitchen into that this was the actually outside door so the well was kind of back here to get to that it's still there it's filled but it's still there and again candlesticks we're gonna see in every room are there anything distinctive about this collection these three candlesticks did belong to the Lincoln's you'll notice they're a little bit plainer than the ones in the front parlor but still nice I mean they still have the crystal dangly pieces they're brass with a marble base so there's they're still nice or just not maybe the absolute top of the line well here's a peculiar question I wonder how long those candlesticks would last because you would be using candles an awful lot they must have gone through a lot of candles during the they did go through a lot of candles the the lists from the the local stores I almost probably every two weeks maybe they were buying candles okay tell me about the items that are on the table on the table we have a reproduction of Lincoln's lap desk we do have the original lap desk it's a very popular item that we loan to a lot of different locations so we had a reproduction made so that we can loan the original out we've got some papers from just around around Springfield and actually mostly Morgan County so Jacksonville again more books that they liked some of the newspapers from the time period mr. Lincoln received five or six newspapers a week he just he liked to be aware of what was going on in the country so one came from Louisville several were from Springfield area he actually owned a German language newspaper from here in town of course the German population was very high they were mostly up in the north side near what is now the state fairgrounds that's where a lot of them were living and there were some in the neighborhood as well that he he was friends with you mentioned that he had a few or a couple from the springfed area so I assume one would be a Democrat paper and one a Whig paper yes he had both the as far as we know he had both the journal and the register delivered obviously he leaned more towards the Whig or the Republican paper eventually but yes he liked to he liked to read as much as he could on on all sides and what's the box that I see in the table there oh the box is his quills and of course that is your only main writing instrument if you were fortunate you would have a steel pen nib but most day-to-day was just done with goose feathers and I want to go back to your discussion about the lap desk yes and I guess I wasn't aware that they have such a thing at the time how would that be used and it sounds rather obvious but how would it be used well much like a laptop today it folds in half obviously you could put the papers underneath to store them there's also room for quills there's room for an inkwell wax seals that you could have used to seal it up fold it in half and stick it in the saddlebag and go on your merry way okay Susan let's head to the dining room let's go to the dining room Susan the dining room and now it might sound obvious but how would the family use the dining room dining room originally when they bought the house this was one big kitchen with a fireplace on this wall over here and like I was saying in the back parlor they wanted to put a bedroom on here so they cut off this and you can see the cuts in the joist over here slid this over you can still see the remnants of the two outside doors that would have led to those porches which is why this is such a long window it's the only window that does that in the house but when they added the second floor Mary then later added a wall in between so she got a formal dining room which is something she would have been used to growing up in a lot more luxury and a lot more wealth in Lexington Kentucky versus Abraham Lincoln in his one-room log cabin 180 miles away so the dining room would have been used pretty much every day it's hard to imagine because the railings do take up so much space but this would have been a very nice-sized dining room for a family of five they would have occasionally had visitors for dinner but generally you did you're visiting after dinner and told me about the table and chairs that we've got okay in 1850s the Lincoln's would have sat around this table possibly I mean this is a gateleg table and that the this is only about two feet wide and then the wings come up and so those can drop down can we pick under the tablecloth oh we can try okay so you can see the seam so these the leg would have swung like a gate too close and then giving you a little bit more room if you needed it in this room the chair these two chairs did belong to the Lincoln's as well they're called fancy painted chairs or the the brand name at the time was a Hitchcock chair because there was a Hitchcock factory in Massachusetts I believe that made this this type of chair these are not specifically Hitchcock but they are very similar in style and they're painted with again a little bit of gold leafing or gold paint but by the time you get into the 1850s Abraham Lincoln is a man of the yes yes and so I'm wondering they must have been doing a lot of entertaining how much entertaining what they have done here in the dining room their formal dinners they wouldn't have done a lot of formal dinners would have done more of an open house effect so you would walk in the front door meet mr. Lincoln maybe in the parlors come through grab a few snacks maybe here Mary might have been in here or she might have been in the sitting room to help kind of keep people moving chatted with her chatted with some of your other friends and whatever and then out the door so total time you could have spent here maybe as short as 15 minutes but it was a CNB scene kind of thing for those kind of events there I would assume there'd be some kind of food lots of food and drink available yes yes Mary was was eventually very well known for her southern cooking which she would have obviously picked up while she was living in Kentucky she also had three of her sisters here in town to help her they would have loaned their kitchens their their ice boxes their pantries they would have also loaned her their servants Mary did not have a servant generally that would have been able to do this kind of serving she would have had a kind of a maid of all work but for the formal serving she would have maybe had to borrow from her sister Elizabeth who was married to the son of the governor at one time so a little more elegant I think it's time now to move on to the sitting room we'll go to the informal parlor or the sitting room yes Susan were in the sitting room now it strikes me now we've got a front parlor a rear parlor a sitting room they all kind of look similar to me how was this room used this room was used a lot more often than the parlors this was the informal side of the house where the family would gather after dinner we know mr. Lincoln liked to stretch out on fluor he would probably be reading a newspaper or a book aloud for the general education of the room mary could sit over there by her sewing table that's the best light in the house it's a southern and a Western exposure so she could do a lot of her sewing with three boys and mr. Lincoln at any one time in the house lots of buttons lost lots of torn knees holes in socks things like that so she could sit over here and do a lot of her sewing if they had people here visiting mr. Lincoln maybe wouldn't be on the floor but they could entertain in here with really good friends tell me about the table here the game table you've got here right besides mr. Lincoln on the floor the boys could have been playing they'd have been wrestling with their dad or playing with the dogs with the cats they could have been looking in this this is a stereoscope and this did belong to the Lincoln's this was a pretty nice toy it cost approximately $20 at the time which for a family who maybe made $500 a year as an average this would have been out of their reach mr. Lincoln was doing very well he was basically the corporate lawyer for the Illinois Central Railroad by this time so he could afford a very nice toy for his boys but you can see some of the cards on the table and basically you put the card in looks at the eye holes and it creates a vaguely three-dimensional effect I mean we kind of laugh at that three-dimensional now but it's pretty exciting for them that was it's the early days of photography it was the early days and I'm wondering what kind of pictures then they would have been looking at well some of the things from around the world we've got st. Paul's Cathedral in London we've got the pyramids and the Sphinx in Egypt Niagara Falls was a popular topic but then we also have a four mule team from Springfield this was just a local picture or ice storms or again the pyramids so just different topics whatever a photographer wanted to make a photograph and then sell and chess was that something that the family would have been playing we know Lincoln played chess we think he was teaching his boys because there was a head of one of the pawns found out in the backyard it was broken we had about this bunch of a piece to go off of but thanks to the world chess Hall of Fame down in st. Louis we were all to identify what the pattern was and get it reproduced so this is based on the original piece from the backyard how much time would Lincoln spend in the room then um most evenings he probably would have been here if he didn't have some other activity this would have been where they would have gathered just as a family so he and the boys together and Mary would all be in the room together and fight oh and a couple of cats and maybe one of the neighbors if they were stopping by for a few minutes this room also is a very important room at Christmas this is the mantel that they would have hung their stockings from so no Christmas tree that we know of but Santa did come and visit and you can see there's still some nail holes in the mantel where they would have hung their stocking would this be about the extent of what Christmas decorations they would do most likely there wasn't a lot of commercial decorations available it would have been natural things so pine Garland's and cranberries and and maybe some Holly sprigs well I think it's time now Susan for us to head upstairs all right let's go upstairs Susan were now on upstairs were in Lincoln's bedroom but I wanted to ask you a couple questions about our trip upstairs and I noticed the steps seem to be a little bit higher than code today is that right they are there was no code back then of course so they they fit the space but they're kind of Lincoln sized agreed they are a little taller than what we're used to so maybe Abraham Lincoln size but not Mary Lincoln's definitely not Mary Lincoln size no she may have had some issues especially with her big skirt okay the other thing I wanted to ask about there is some space right at the top of the stairs there I guess we decided to call that the sitting area but it seems like there's a potential it might be wasted space but I bet they didn't waste it they did not waste that space that is a good sitting area for Mary she did a lot of sewing there based on the pins and needles and thread we found in the floor it was also a chance for her to kind of keep an eye on the boys a lot of times they'd be playing out in this eat in front of the house and this looks out onto that street so kind of childcare and sewing and as we're in this room now I'm amazed by how high the ceilings are as is higher than the first floor this is this is about a foot taller these are closer to 12 feet the ones downstairs are 10 and a half or so partially for the architectural style to make it look right on the outside but also some practicality the heat you know heat rises so in summer it was a lot cooler if you had a tall ceiling the heat could go up to the top maybe keep it a little cooler down here where her day was well speaking of the heat I noticed we've got some nice windows here but the venetian blinds was not what I was expected to see when I came in here the venetian blinds show up in in 18 several 1860 photos these are the only windows they show up in so because this was a guest room maybe they were trying to provide a little something extra for their guests gives you some ventilation but also some privacy helps a little bit keep the bugs out but there were no screens so probably not real effective on the bug situation but very stylish venetian blinds have been around since the 1600s there in the room where the Declaration of Independence was signed about the same color at one point it's from what I know but yeah these were these are just a little bit of a little stylish extra watch you turn around and tell us a little bit about the bed the bed is actually our only Lincoln bed in the house it did belong to the Lincoln's it's a an earlier style so this might have been something they purchased shortly after they moved in here it's a little short for mr. Lincoln he may have had to sleep a little crossways it's only about 7 feet from end to end so that doesn't give you a lot of space but it's called the sleigh bed it has a really nice veneer of mahogany on it it's a really good piece it's a nice piece when you say it's the Lincoln bed was that a bed that he had before he got married probably not he was living friends or renting a renting out rooms and so he probably didn't need to have any kind of major furniture pieces so this was probably something that they bought once they moved into the house and peeking underneath the bed yes can you pull that out for us sure it's heavy yes that is a chamber pot that is something at every room bedroom at least had to have if you didn't want to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night outside which is the regular bathroom location or if you were sick or for whatever reason he had a chamber pot tucked under the bed that would have been the job of the hired girl then the next morning to empty it probably not her favorite job let's move to the Lincoln Bedroom then Susan we are now in the Lincoln Bedroom and Lincoln is in Abraham Lincoln's room and as I understand we're looking out into the in the front of the house here and I know there's some unique pieces that you definitely want to talk about here mm-hmm yeah this is Lincoln's bedroom again the nice tall ceilings to go with the architecture outside also probably just to make him feel more comfortable I mean at 64 he needed a lot of space but he was also pretty modest about things so you'll notice that the pieces of furniture in here that did belong to mr. Lincoln are they're nice but they're not elaborate so we do have Lincoln's wardrobe it's a nice solid serviceable piece made out of walnut it does come apart and the top comes off the bottom comes off all four sides and the doors come off so it could be transported if it needed to be and then put together again with pegs we also have his chest of drawers and we're back again to a little bit older style this would have been made probably the late 1840s early 1850s but obviously still a really nice piece not any of his accessories though it's not suspenders or his bowtie just something that looks a lot like what he would have worn and then in the corner we have his pigeonhole desk and according to the affadavit this was Lincoln's first desk when he set up business for himself he said little small he probably would have had to wrap his legs around the legs of the desk to sit there with any comfort whatsoever but apparently it was it was something he he used a lot he later brought it home he probably got in a bigger desk at work he brought it home and as far as we know he worked on it here in the corner were their neighbors remember seeing candle light burning in these windows up to midnight 1:00 a.m. a lot of nights so this probably was where it was would you like to make any comments about both the wallpaper and the carpeting my thought is boy do they like things busy they did the the fashion of the time was called harmony through contrast and they certainly achieved that here if you want to count the the Blues as the harmony they do mostly match the wallpaper in here is the original pattern and color now this was reproduced and put in here in 1988 but this is a French wallpaper that Mary ordered we think from her brother-in-law stores from the Smith store and this is what she picked out we have the original pieces well we're right here at the doorway to Mary's bedroom so let's head in there all right Susan here we are in Mary's bedroom and I wanted to start this time with the mirror and the dresser and the wash basin all right well again we have a little bathroom area for lack of a better description in Mary's room we have the wash stand with again the picture and the basin and then we have a little foot bath that would have been used for most bathing obviously they didn't have showers and we've never seen any evidence of a big tub or anything like that although they're worth of tubs available so this being Mary's personal space she could kind of close off the room and do her whatever she needed to do as far as as bathing hopefully without too many interruptions from boys and hired girls and everybody else we do have her commode here in the corner and I'm sure she's not happy that I always pointed out but this is a really nice piece it is mahogany it's so it's a little bit upscale and it would have you would have taken the lid off there would have been a chamber pot just like everybody else is inside but the fact that it has a little seat makes it a little bit nicer and then the dresser the dresser back here did belong to Mary Lincoln as far as we know this is something she would have brought back brought with her from Kentucky it is a Kentucky made item we've confirmed that with Kentucky Historical Society they have another one made by a carpenter from the Lexington area it's again a little bit older style so this has probably made about 1818 1820 Mary was born in 1818 so this was something that her mother may have actually even purchased for their home in Lexington so she may have kept it for sentimental reasons her mother died when she was very young and and so she may have wanted to keep that just to remind her of her mother it's interesting because those are curved shell or Curt drawers that you've got in there it gives you a sense that maybe they're woodworking skills were better than we would have anticipated even in those early years they were very talented people definitely craftsmen again this is a tiger maple or a burl maple veneer on it which would have been a little more expensive and yeah the curving would have caused it would have needed some skill to create what are the two crystal items on top of the dresser there those are bottles that would have contained perfumes or some sort of scented oils there is no deodorant there's no speed stick at the time and so people could get very aromatic we say so lady might have used something to kind of combat that as well well we saw her foot bath here and when you're talking about this how often would a family during that era have a avid bath let's put it that way that Saturday night bath night that we've all heard of is very much the case hopefully the boys would have gotten baths more often because they would have gotten dirtier more often but generally once a week maybe twice a week let's move to the boys bedroom all right Susan the boys bedroom for boys yes I know there was a tragedy during this timeframe but I'm wondering how even three boys fit into a bedroom like this well three boys didn't use this bedroom at one time so when they added on the second floor of the house this was Robert's room he got it all to himself he was the oldest and then his second brother Eddie the second the second boy had died when he was four downstairs and what had been their their bedroom downstairs Willie and tad were born after Eddie died so they're only ever three boys in the house at one time and when they added on the second floor like I said Robert got this room Willie and tad the two youngest slept in a trundle bed in Mary Lincoln's room that pulled out from under her bed but by 1860 which is alloyed we had the house now Robert was away at school so Willie and tad shared this room they slept in the same bed together as far as we know yes you'll notice there is no source of heat up here not even a stove in this room partially because there's no chimney to attach to but also partially because Willie and tad being rambunctious boys of ten and seven years old I don't know that that would have been a good idea to have open flame in their room good point well let's start with the things that are over here and this dresser here the books especially I'm wondering what the boys would have been reading these were some books that were available at the time period an ABC book probably more for tad the passionate child is an interesting very moralistic tale about a little girl who who disobeyed her mother and her mother tied her feet and her hands together and set her on a stool as punishment something that probably wouldn't go so well these days but again and designed to teach we've got books on some of the early math algebra geometry and biographies as well those probably would have been more for Willie what's especially interesting though is to see all the things that boys would have been playing with the time yes so we have marbles we have dominoes we've got chess and checkers Toy Soldiers some of the marbles were found in the backyard in the Lincoln home not all of these but something unfortunately the the dull ones the clay that would have been just extras at the end of the day for a Potter they just would make some little marbles and what's on this table then that's intriguing me we've got dominoes we've got some carved wooden animals that they could have played with the tale itself did belong to the Lincoln's the the legs unfortunately supports broke frequently so they were often repaired in fact the last time mr. Lincoln gave it to the the gentleman to repair and he just said keep it they were getting ready to move to Washington so it's stayed here in Springfield and there's a poll on the corner yes a fishing pole in the corner the town branch wasn't too far away just a few blocks south of here apparently that was pretty good fishing at the time so I'm sure the boys did some fishing mr. Lincoln maybe even went along with them when he could get a chance to get away Susan the major room or the hired hands room is how you refer to it when can you tell me about this room this room is kind of an interesting room and that it's over an open back porch and the unheated pantry so it's always cold in here in the winter even with central heating this would have been a storage room when they didn't have a hired girl it would been something that the hired girl would have actually enjoyed though even though it's cold and it's small and it's cramped and probably full of a lot of extra things from the Lincoln family because she would have been in most cases she was a young immigrant 14 15 years old as the average from Ireland or Portugal are the two most prominent groups that were coming because she had it to herself so she didn't have to share this with three or four siblings she had a room to herself so that's not a bad deal for her 14 or 15 years old mm-hmm not living with her parents correct and is that typical that they would be leaving the home by that time very typical especially if the family needed the money the girls were expected to earn their keep as well as the boys and this was one of the best ways to do it because not only was she earning money she's also learning how to run a household for herself so a lot of the girls would leave here and either go to a bigger house for more money or would go get married 16:17 was a pretty average age to get married back then how much were they getting paid we estimate about a dollar 50 a week plus room and board so that would have bought you a nice pair of boots nice pair of boots was about a dollar fifty or but most of the time if you were 14 or 15 it was going back to your family because you in theory you didn't have any needs you had your room you had your board if you were lucky they may have even provided you with clothing at the house you were working is the wooden floor original wooden floor is original it's the only one in the house probably because this was a storeroom for most of its life so that it didn't didn't get banged up it didn't really need to be replaced when the rest of the house was needing replacement flooring so this this is the original flooring and the original color to some paint was found under the floorboards so it's got 10 of this barn red effect let's move downstairs speaking of food let's go to the kitchen that well we were upstairs I asked you Mary was an efficient housekeeper was she a good cook she became one when she first was married she was used to a considerably easier life she had grown up with slaves who had done all the work and the cooking and then moving into her sister Elizabeth's house her sister Elizabeth also had servants so Mary didn't have to really learn how to cook apparently though she was determined to to do that she got herself a cookbook that's still up with the Presidential Museum and Library iliza less people I thought Leslie's cookbook and she taught herself how to cook mr. Lincoln was not a particular he was not a foodie he was not particularly soul he was also very bad about getting home on time for supper so sometimes the ruined meals were not Mary's fault they were more mr. Lincoln's fault but she became pretty good at basic what would consider Midwestern cooking corned beef and cabbage venison stew was apparently a favorite based on the bones we found in the Privy they ate steaks t-bone steaks chicken pork so basic Midwestern cooking how about the stove what can you tell us about the stove stove belonged to Mary Lincoln she purchased it in June of 1862 Lincoln had been nominated for the presidency probably anticipating that she was going to be doing a lot of entertaining so this was a very fence well very fancy stove I should say a decent stove for 1860 it costs probably about 20 dollars by the time it was shipped from Buffalo New York efficient efficient for the time there's a an oven and back the wood would have gone in here in the front actually obviously a cooktop and some areas in front for heating and warming things like the irons when you needed them for ironing and behind you there is that a dry sink and is a dry sink it is lined with a galvanized tin there is a hole at the bottom where a plug a cork would have gone so that when you've got done washing your dishes you would have had a bucket underneath could pull the plug and on the water could run into the bucket underneath and go out the door and throw it in the backyard was there any ice that they would have had they could have had ice there would have been an ice box in the pantry away from the heat of the stove so you would have had to step across the back porch to the pantry there were several ice houses in Springfield with as far as we know Sangamon River ice so they could have gotten some yes let's go and check the pantry and then the backyard well we can do that we are obviously outside now Susan yes and I was just talking about going to the pantry where is the pantry pantry is this little room off the back porch the open back porch it has shelving in it maybe a small icebox that would have had things that were kept cold but they didn't need to store a lot of food because the market was just a block away on what was capital was called Market Streets hose it was right there one thing we didn't mention on the inside was any source of water well obviously we're looking at the water source now yes we've got two different sources we've got a well over here that would have been fresh water for drinking and cooking and then we have a cistern over here and you can see how it ties into the guttering system on the house and that would have been used for cleaning okay so when they were filling up their wash basins which one would they prefer so for washing clothes they would have used the sister in water when I'm especially curious about is if they had any kind of livestock or any kind of animals at all would they have had chickens in the back they probably would have had a few chickens almost everybody did you would have had a small chicken coop maybe inside the barn back here and they would have just been allowed to roam the yard essentially and that's why you have the fences around the yards they may have had a pig once in a while they definitely had a cow and then they had horses the horses were did they have a buggy they had a they had a buggy and a carriage at one point mr. Lincoln would have used probably the buggy to go on when he was doing the the 8th Judicial Circuit so the other one would have been used for the one the whole family would go places so we've got chickens possibly a pig a cow and a horse that's a lot of livestock for a small lot like this it is but it was very typical at a time period pretty much everybody had that kind of livestock in their house like so the chickens would have been allowed to roam free in the backyard with a coop maybe in the barn the pig and the cow the pigs mostly roamed the streets you knew which one was your Pig based on the notches of the ears everybody had their own individual one the cow and the horses if the horses weren't being used that day the cow and the horses would have been taken over but over the 10th Street tracks which were there then and are still there now to cut of the community pasture land that was beyond that to the east take him out there in the morning let them graze all day and then go back and get him at night and bring him into the barn would that be something the boys would be expected to do possibly the boys might have done that mr. Lincoln did that frequently the higher girl would maybe have to do it or if they had a neighbor boy maybe it was going over to get his he could bring theirs back as well was it a milk cow it was a milk cow yes the outhouse the outhouse that's in its original location that is not the original outhouse unfortunately there were three different locations in the backyard where we have found privy pits as they're called that is it's the last one that had anything from the 1860s in it so that's the last place that the Lincoln's used it this particular outhouse belonged to some farmers in Oakland Illinois and they were friends of the Lincoln's mr. Lincoln frequently stopped by that house when he was riding the circuit so he may have used it in at some point it is a super deluxe model as I call it though it does have three seats small medium and large I don't know that you necessarily wanted company when you were in there but if you did you could I guess do you ever get this question well what did they use for toilet paper we do all the time there was no Sears catalog at the time so you use leaves rags and corn cobs well it speaks to the eternal interest that the American public in fact the world has an Abraham Lincoln allow you to finish with this how important do you think this home is to America's legacy Oh golly um well I think it's Lincoln as' is such an integral and such an important part of American and world history his whole focus once he got to the presidency was holding the Union together which he did succeed in doing and this house is where he started formulating those ideas for how he was going to succeed as a president but this is also a good place you can take him down off the pedestal and make him more real to you this is the this is the familiar part this is this is Lincoln with his shirt sleeves rolled up rustling on the floor and playing with a cat and you know in his lap or you know helping Mary put the dishes away after supper and Mary is taking care of the boys when they're sick this is this is the part that everyone can relate to this is a family man this isn't Lincoln Memorial Lincoln okay again you've done a great job telling us this story and giving us insights and Abraham Lincoln thank you very much thank you

Channel: Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

Views: 258,260

Rating: 4.8719344 out of 5

Keywords: Abraham Lincoln home, Mary Lincoln, the Todd sisters, Robert Lincoln, Willie Lincoln, Tad Lincoln, life during the mid-19th century in America, National Park Service, decorative arts during mid-19th century America, sanitation during 19th century, Lincoln home life, French influences

Id: XiAe1ndrmJ8

Length: 44min 50sec (2690 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 11 2019