Todd, Robert S., 1792-1849

Lexington, Kentucky lawyer, father-in-law of Ninian W. Edwards, and father of Mary Todd Lincoln.

From the description of Letter, July 12, 1841. (Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library). WorldCat record id: 190881354

Lexington, Kentucky lawyer and businessman, father-in-law of Ninian W. Edwards, and father of Mary Todd Lincoln.

From the description of Legal documents, 1805-1809, 1819, 1839. (Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library). WorldCat record id: 276306220

Lexington, Kentucky lawyer and father of Mary Todd Lincoln. Another daughter, Elizabeth, was married to Ninian W. Edwards, son of the Illinois governor. Todd's first wife Eliza died in 1825 and in 1826 he married Elizabeth L. Humpreys.

From the description of Letters, 1826-1846. (Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library). WorldCat record id: 55941350

Robert Smith Todd was a prosperous cotton merchant, businessman, and Whig politician in Kentucky. His father, Levi Todd, was one of the founders of Lexington and his daughter, Mary, married Abraham Lincoln.

From the description of R.S. Todd papers, 1828. (Kentucky Historical Society). WorldCat record id: 38849982

ROBERT S. TODD

Robert S. Todd and Eliza Ann Parker, both of distinguished Lexington, Kentucky families were the parents of Mary Ann Todd Lincoln and five other children who survived to adulthood. Eliza Ann Parker Todd died in July 1825. Robert S. Todd then married Elizabeth Humphreys and had nine children by her, eight of whom lived until the Civil War. Robert S. Todd died on July 16, 1849 during a cholera epidemic in Lexington. Just before his death he made and signed a will that was, however, witnessed by only one person. George R.C. Todd, the eldest son of the Parker marriage, and Mary Lincoln's full brother, contested the will in the Kentucky Courts on the grounds of having no second witness and won his case. Thus, by Kentucky law, the widow and administratix, Elizabeth Humphreys (or Elizabeth L.) Todd had to convert the estate into cash, including the share in the business of Oldham, Todd & Co. and divide it equally among the fourteen children then living.

WILLIAM E. BARTON

Rev. William Eleazar Barton (1861-1930) The Rev. William Eleazar Barton (1861-1930) was one of the early twentieth century's most prominent writers and lecturers on the life of Abraham Lincoln. Born in Sublette, Illinois, in the same year Lincoln assumed the presidency, Barton grew up in an environment heavily influenced by reverence for Lincoln. After pursuing undergraduate studies at Berea College in Kentucky, Barton earned his divinity degree from the Oberlin Theological Seminary in 1890. He served parishes in Tennessee, Ohio, and Massachusetts before becoming the pastor of the First Congregational Church of Oak Park, Illinois, a position he held until his retirement in 1924. Four years later, Barton accepted an appointment as lecturer at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, where he also organized and served as pastor of the Collegeside Congregational Church.

Barton's work as a writer produced a number of denominational manuals for church organization and a series of books presenting the wisdom and parables of a character he named Safed the Sage. For the last ten years of his life, however, Barton was best known to the public as a prolific author and lecturer on Abraham Lincoln. His publications about Lincoln included The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (1920), The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln (1920), The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1925), The Great and Good Man (1927), The Women Lincoln Loved (1927), and The Lincoln of the Biographers (1930).

In the course of compiling material for his writings and talks, Barton visited Lincoln sites in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois; interviewed surviving Lincoln relatives and acquaintances; and traveled as far as California and England to collect information and conduct genealogical research on the ancestry of the Lincoln family. While acquiring a large collection of books, periodicals, pamphlets, manuscripts, and ephemera related to Lincoln and the Civil War era, Barton also purchased privately or at auction historical materials amassed by other Lincoln collectors such as John E. Burton and Osborn H. Oldroyd.

From the guide to the Lincoln Collection. Robert S. Todd. Papers, 1819-1860, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)