Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln

Acknowledgments

xi Acknowledgments Any author who spends nearly a decade traveling across the country, visiting and researching in numerous archives, museums, and historic sites, speaking to countless groups, meeting scores of interesting and helpful people, and ultimately creating a biographical tome (with a first draft of more than twelve hundred manuscript pages) hopes and intends to be definitive and will become indebted to a long list of people who assisted in various ways. I have done my best through the years conscientiously to keep my list, but if I have omitted anyone’s name, I apologize profusely. I offer a blanket statement of sincere gratitude to everyone who has aided me along the way. More particularly , I thank: The entire staff at Robert Lincoln’s Hildene, the Lincoln Family Home, Manchester, Vermont, for their assistance and enthusiasm. I especially thank director Seth Bongartz for making me Hildene’s first scholar-in-residence for the year 2010, and again for 2011; deputy director Laine Dunham for scanning so many photos and illustrations from the Hildene collections; former curator/ historian Brian Knight and his interim replacement, lead historic interpreter Gary Sloan Jr., for their generous research assistance and for allowing me unparalleled access to the Hildene archives and collections. The staff at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois, especially Lincoln curator James Cornelius, whose assistance and generosity was incalculable, Jennifer Ericson, Cheryl Schnirring, Glenna Schroeder-Lein, and Gwenith Podeschi. Lynn Ellsworth, executive director, Harlan-Lincoln House, Iowa Wesleyan College, Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Edouard L. Desrochers, assistant librarian and academy archivist, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire. Debbie Vaughn, director of research and access and chief librarian, Chicago History Museum. Keith Housewright, librarian, Sangamon Valley Collection, Lincoln Library, Springfield, Illinois. Jane Westenfeld, curator, Ida M. Tarbell Collection, Pelletier Library, Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania. Elizabeth B. Dunn, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Tim Townsend, historian, and Susan Haake, curator, Lincoln Home National Historic Site, Springfield, Illinois. acknowledgments xii Gwen Thompson, director, and the entire staff of the Mary Todd Lincoln House, Lexington, Kentucky. Chris Winter, curator, Batavia Depot Museum, Batavia, Illinois. Olga Tsapina, Norris Foundation Curator, American Historical Manuscripts , Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Don McCue, curator, Lincoln Shrine, Redlands, California. Jason Meyers, curator, Museum of Funeral Customs, Springfield, Illinois. Nan Card, curator of manuscripts, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, Spiegel Grove, Fremont, Ohio. Barbara L. Krieger, archives specialist, Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College Library, Hanover, New Hampshire. Alex Rankin, assistant director for acquisitions, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University. Margaret Downs Hrabe, reference coordinator, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Martha Briggs, Lloyd Lewis Curator of Midwest Manuscripts, Newberry Archives, Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois. Holly Snyder, Patricia Sirois, and Ann Morgan Dodge of the John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Susan Halpert, reference librarian, Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, for helping me find my way through the labyrinth of the Houghton’s vast holdings. Michelle Gachette and Kyle DeCicco-Carey, reference assistants at the Harvard University Archives, Pusey Library, Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Diane P. Rofini, librarian, Chester County Historical Society, West Chester, Pennsylvania. Bill Marshall, curator of manuscripts, Margaret I. King Library, and Laura Hall, reference services, Reference Commons, University of Kentucky, Lexington. Ron Keller, curator, Lincoln College Museum, Lincoln, Illinois. John Sellers, former Lincoln Librarian, and the entire staff of the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Jill M. Abraham, archives specialist, old military and civil records, and Sharon Fitzpatrick, Congressional relations specialist, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. Rick Peuser, assistant chief, NWCT2—Reference, Archives II, National Archives at College Park, Maryland. Dottie Hopkins-Rehan, senior archival conservator Illinois State Archives, acknowledgments xiii for finding and photocopying documents related to Abraham Lincoln’s 1901 reburial. Lee Whittlesey, park historian, Yellowstone National Park. Cindy Van Horn, Lincoln librarian, formerly of the Lincoln Museum and now of the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Eric Brooks, curator, Ashland: The Henry Clay Estate, Lexington, Kentucky. Tara Zachary Laver, curator of manuscripts, Special Collections Library, Louisiana State University. James S. Brust, MD, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and medical director of the psychiatric unit at Providence, Little Company of Mary Medical Center, San Pedro, California, and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry David Geffen, School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles. Ophthalmologists James W. Rosenberg, MD, of...