Abraham Lincoln’s eyeglasses with superb provenance and photo identification 1582. Abraham Lincoln. A pair of eyeglasses belonging to Abra-
ham Lincoln. The photographs of Abraham Lincoln referred to below are identified by the numbers assigned to them by Lloyd Ostendorf in Lincoln in Photographs: An Album of Every Known Pose by Charles Hamilton and Lloyd Ostendorf (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963). The gold colored pair here offered appear to be the spectacles Lincoln is holding in his hands in a photograph made by Alexander Gardner in Washington, D.C., between early February and April 10, 1865 (O116D), one of a multi-image stereographic pose of four images. Charles Hamilton writes, ‘The President holds his spectacles and a pencil, both blurred…the photographer often employed an artist to retouch or add to the scene. Here Lincoln’s spectacles and pencil…are plainly outlined’ –undoubtedly using the spectacles worn by Lincoln as a model. Present is a photocopy of an Affidavit and Deed of Gift signed in full and dated August 16, 1977 by Lincoln’s great grandson and last direct descendant, Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith. In full: “I, Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith of Washington, D.C., certify that among the contents of a trunk located and unopened until recently, and placed in the attic of Hildene, the estate of my grandfather Robert Todd Lincoln, Manchester, Vermont, by my grandmother Mary Harlan Lincoln (Mrs. Robert Todd Lincoln), and the said contents being awarded to me by the Estate of my sister Mary Lincoln Beckwith, were found two pair of eye glasses which had belonged to my great grandfather President Abraham Lincoln, and so marked by my grandmother Mary Harlan Lincoln. I further give one pair of these eye glasses to Margaret Fristoe of Chevy Chase, Maryland, and one pair to James T. Hickey of Elkhart, Illinois.” At the time, Hickey was the Curator of the Lincoln Collection of the Illinois State Historical Library, now the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. The pair given to Hickey is in the Library’s collection. Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln, married Mary Harlan. Their daughter Jessie Lincoln married Warren Wallace Beckwith. Jessie and Warren’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, married Mrs. Margaret Fristoe (1921-2009) in 1979. Her sole heir was her daughter, Lenora Fristoe Hoverson, Robert Beckwith’s stepdaughter. Her affidavit is also present. Two pair of eyeglasses, both in the trunk at Hildene, among other artifacts, were consigned by Mrs. Hoverson to a reputable midwest entity and were purchased by University Archives. In 1937, a locked leather box containing the contents of Lincoln’s pockets the night of his assassination in 1865 was donated by the family to the Library of Congress. Included were two pairs of spectacles and their cases. In 1977, the prescriptions for both pairs were examined by the Chief Optician for the Veteran’s Administration, with both pairs falling within the range of Lincoln’s prescription and matching the pair offered here. President Lincoln is wearing his spectacles in the famous photograph of Lincoln and his son Tad looking through a photograph album (O-93).
This is the only known close-up photograph of Lincoln wearing spectacles. On November 19, 2008, at Heritage Auctions, a pair of spectacles belonging to Abraham Lincoln sold for $179,250. Accompanying the spectacles were a letter from Mary Harlan Lincoln (Mrs. Robert Todd Lincoln) to Joseph Leisenring presenting him with a book owned by her late son, Abraham Lincoln II, saying, ‘You can put it away with the ‘A.L.’ spectacles which I gave you a long time ago & so have a little memento of the grand-son as well as the grand-father’ and a 1985 affidavit signed by David Rowland, Leisenring’s great-great grandson, setting out the chain of family ownership until their acquisition by Dr. Joseph Lattimer, the consignor of the spectacles. The strength of the lenses of these spectacles was not mentioned in the description suggesting the power was never determined. Those spectacles, as were the gold colored spectacles here offered, originated from Mrs. Robert Todd Lincoln. With President Lincoln’s daughter-in-law being the source of both pairs, the major difference between the Lattimer spectacles and these gold colored spectacles is that all evidence points to these gold colored spectacles being the ones President Lincoln is holding in the photograph taken in early 1865 by Alexander Gardner in Washington, D.C. (O-116D). A more detailed description is available online at rrauction. com. RRAuction COA.…(MB $10,000)
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 9