Author's Note:

I would like to thank the readers and families of Mr. Lew Bloom, Mr. Edward Milch, Mr. William Alderfer, Mr. James Hickey, and the previous restorers for indulging me in this fanciful presentation of the painting's history as opposed to the format used in my past, more serious, Case Studies. In researching this painting, I read 650 of Mary Lincoln's letters and gleaned sections that would correspond to what I discovered throughout the conservation process. Mary Lincoln was a letter writer, and as I formulated in my mind how to present this Study it occurred to me that an exchange of letters would best suit her history. The Italicized Version of her letters, linked here and on Page 14, offers a clear presentation of her citations. Finally, I would like to thank my family, whose company I am still here to enjoy.

Mary Lincoln's was a life full of tragedy. When Mary was six her mother died; in a span of six months between 1849 and 1850, Mary's father, maternal grandmother, and four-year-old son Edward Baker Lincoln all died; eleven-year-old son Willie died in the White House in 1862; Abraham Lincoln was assassinated while Mary sat beside him holding his hand in 1865; and her youngest boy Thomas "Tad" Lincoln died in 1871 at age seventeen. (1)

The following collection documents correspondences between Mary Lincoln and our father, Barry Bauman. These letters along with some other Lincoln relics were shown to us some eight or nine days before our father's death, with the stipulation that we should write about them but not until our father should have passed on. Our father was most anxious that these letters be published because he felt that Mrs. Lincoln had been maligned and that the portfolio would explain much of the real Mrs. Lincoln to the world and place her in a more favorable light. (2)

The surviving letters and images were found in a trunk of documents in July 2011. (3) Mary Lincoln lived in a conspiratorial world. The information you are about to read records the astonishing facts surrounding one of these conspiracies. The letters are presented without quotation marks. Source material notes are placed individually at the bottom of each page and collectively with the bibliographic references on the Notes page. Navigation to the next page is located below right.

Page 2

Notes:

1. Pritchard/Emerson. p. 11. Footnote n. This paragraph is drawn verbatim. Emerson's captivating account of his search for and eventual discovery of Pritchard's manuscript concerning Mary Lincoln's trial served as the basis for the Editors' Introduction. Tad was born April 4, 1853 and died July 15, 1871. Therefore, he was eighteen when he died, not seventeen.

2. Pritchard/Emerson. pp. x-xi. Emerson notes this citation from Myra Helmer Pritchard, "Statement Regarding the Disposal of Mary Lincoln Letters," Mar. 1, 1928, Myra Pritchard Family Papers. p. 158. Necessary changes have been made for contextual purposes. This requirement will not be further noted but accepted as understood throughout.

3. Pritchard/Emerson. p. xv, xvi.

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