Well, it happened again. ABC 27 in Harrisburg called on me to assist with another historical piece for the country's 250th anniversary. This time, my pal Kaylee Lindenmuth (the only reason ABC 27 has even heard of me, really) was doing a piece about Pennsylvania's first governor, Thomas Mifflin, and why so many things in the commonwealth are named after him. They actually put me on television this time, which I hadn't quite expected. So if you found your way here via that broadcast or article, hi! And if you haven't seen it, here it is.
And just today I also got featured in a more local newspaper. Patty and I cover a couple of the same meetings for our respective local papers, so we sit together and chitchat. I told her about the Harrisburg gigs and she asked if it would be okay to do a piece on me for her paper; I said sure, and today it happened. Interesting month so far, and I'm very honored to have had this little blog of mine featured so much!
Meanwhile, in preparation for a possible small influx of new readers, I should probably get to this week's quest, yes? We're wandering down to Chester County today, specifically to the historic borough of West Chester, where yet another local paper once did something rather remarkable that impacted the Presidential election of 1860.
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| The marker stands at 28 West Market Street in front of the Everhart-Lincoln Building. |
The publication was the Chester County Times, and it operated out of a three-story Federal-style structure known then as the William Everhart Building. It was named after its original owner, the Congressman William Everhart, who arranged its construction in 1833. The editor of the Times, H. Joseph Lewis, operated his newspaper out of the lowest level. In those days, newspapers tended to have a slant toward one political party or another, and the Times was decidedly a Republican paper. Lewis wanted to do a series of profiles on the most probable contenders for the Republican nomination for the 1860 Presidential race. Among these was an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, so Lewis wanted to give him a biographical sketch in the paper.
The major problem, as you might imagine, was that Lewis didn't know Lincoln or all that much about him. But he did know Jesse W. Fell. You might have heard of him, although I personally never had until researching this post (or at least not that I recall). Fell was a businessman and lawyer who is best remembered today for helping to found the University of Illinois. He was a Chester County native and an old friend of Lewis's, and as it happened, he was also pretty good friends with that Lincoln chap. So, at Lewis's request, Fell reached out to Lincoln with an idea. Send me a draft, he said, around 600 words or so in length, telling your life story in your own words. My friend will run it in his paper and let the people of America know who you are.
We don't have Fell's original letter. Nor can I find a copy online of the sketch printed in the Times, although I've listed a book in my sources which almost certainly includes it. The Times itself only lasted a few more years, and stopped printing in 1863 when it merged with another paper, the Delaware Gazette, to become a single publication called The Republican. You know, just in case people didn't know which party it supported. What we do have, however, is the letter that Lincoln wrote about himself. It's been ranked as #5 on a list of "150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents." The original document is actually in the Library of Congress, in the Lincoln Papers, having been donated in 1947 by one of Jesse Fell's great-grandsons. A transcription is available on the website of Dickinson College; I have it linked in the sources below.
Lincoln wrote three pages of his life story. He began by sharing how the Lincolns were Quakers who lived at one time in Berks County (and the farm is still there and has its own marker so I'll be visiting it down the road), then moved to Virginia and later to Illinois. His mother died when Lincoln was a boy, as we were all taught in school, and like many of his rural Illinois neighbors he was raised with little in the way of an education. He learned "readin', writin', and cipherin'," but that's all that teachers were required to know or to teach. Lincoln became a lawyer entirely by studying the law of his own volition while serving in various positions in the Illinois legislature.
I like his description of his person. "...it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes." It reminds me of the way Arthur Conan Doyle described Sherlock Holmes.
Lewis was apparently delighted by the information. The Pennsylvania connection was particularly valuable, in his opinion, and would surely win Lincoln votes from men of the commonwealth. After Fell rewrote the account to make it third-person, Lewis ran it strategically on Saturday, February 11, 1860 - one day before "Old Abe's" birthday. It quickly turned into a publicity device, and was even more successful than Lewis could have predicted. Lincoln won the Republican nomination and, of course, was elected to the presidency in the fall. Lincoln, for his part, remembered that Lewis had done him a huge service by running this sketch, and when the opportunity to thank him arose, he took it. In 1863, with his editorial services no longer being needed at the now-defunct Times, Lewis accepted an appointment from Lincoln to serve as commissioner of internal revenue and oversee the newly established federal income tax. He retained the post until Lincoln's untimely death in 1865, after which he resigned and came home to Chester County once more.
Today, the building where the Times printed Lincoln's first biography is known as the Everhart-Lincoln Building. It's listed on the National Register of Historic Places and West Chester's own list of historic sites (#10 on the self-guided tour). The basement was, for many years, a popular tea room known as the Lincoln Room, to commemorate the printing. Although the tea room no longer operates, the space still retains the name and is sometimes rented out for private events or community gatherings; it has also hosted ghost tours. The building serves as headquarters for the Chester County Community Foundation, which uses it to promote the history of the area.
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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