Six Interesting Coincidences-- Part 2: Robert Todd Lincoln and Three Presidential Assassinations

 3.  ROBERT LINCOLN ON SCENE AT THREE PRESIDENTIAL ASSASSINATIONS

Robert Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's son and the man Edwin Booth saved in Philadelphia in 1863, was at his father's death in 1865.  Less than a month later, he resigned from the Army and moved to Chicago with his distraught mother.  He later married, had children and established a successful law practice.

He also remained involved in politics and  became Secretary of War in President James A. Garfield's  administration in 1881.  That July, Lincoln was at a train station in Washington, ready to travel to New Jersey with Garfield (who had been in office less than two months).  Before their train left the station, however, Charles Guiteau shot Garfield in the back.  The president died from complications from the wound two months later.

In 1901, President William McKinley to Buffalo, New York, invited Robert Lincoln to attend the Pan-American Exposition.  Lincoln arrived when the event was already in progress and was heading to meet the president when Leon Czolgosz fatally shot McKinley in the chest and abdomen in front of a crowd of well-wishers.

Lincoln, who was  in the later part of his career, president of the Pullman Company, was said to have remarked that there was "a certain  fatality about the  presidential function when I am present."

--Cooter

Mrs. Lincoln Commitment Papers Preserved at Lincoln Library

From the Nov. 2nd Chicago Sun Times.

Original Cook County (Chicago) documents concerning the commitment of the wife of Abraham Lincoln will be preserved at the Lincoln Library and Museum in Springfield. The papers are from 1875 and 1876.

One is the petition of her son, Robert Lincoln, the only surviving son, to have his mother declared insane. Others are a subpoena and summons to have her appear in court and the jury verdict decreeing her insanity.

After her husband's assassination in 1865, she moved to Chicago and lived for awhile in Hyde Park. Some observers considered her insane over the years, but by 1975, Robert Todd Lincoln, a Chicago lawyer became increasingly worried about her erratic behavior.

She would walk around with more than $57,000 sewn into her petticoat, visit clairvoyants to communicate with the dead and though people were trying to poison her.

In May 1875, he initiated court proceedings for insanity. After a three hour trial, a Cook County court found her guilty and she was taken to an upscale asylum at Bellevue Place in Batavia, Illinois (a suburb). The place still stands on the Lincoln Highway.

She was furious at her son and worked with friends to make a case for her sanity which led to her release a few months later.

I Wonder If She Was Ever Friendly with Robert After That. --Cooter