Wife of President Abraham Lincoln (1818 -1882) and First Lady from 1861 to 1865. Hand-addressed black-bordered mailing envelope, 5.5 x 3, addressed by Lincoln to “Dr. Anson G. Henry, Olympia, Washington Territory,” and also annotated by her in the upper left, “Overland Route.” Envelope bears a three cent George Washington stamp, and a July 17, Chicago postmark, with a faint date at the bottom of the cancellation possibly reading “1865.” Also noted on the reverse in pencil in unknown hand “Mrs. Mary T. Lincoln 7-17-1865.” In very good condition, with scattered toning and soiling, several edge tears and creases, and missing portion of back flap and separations to reverse.
After President Lincoln’s assassination, Dr. Henry tended to a heartbroken Mrs. Lincoln until she moved out of the White House. He then accompanied her by train from Washington, D.C. to Chicago in late May before he returned to Washington. The former first lady is said to have greatly missed Henry, and in the correspondence once housed within this envelope advised him that she believed ‘in my heart, that you are really, the only disinterested, sincere friend, left us. It was very painful to us, I assure you, to find that you had to return home. I had fondly hoped, that you, would have been settled in W[ashington] and we would have received frequent visits from you & Mrs Henry, whom I remember with much affection.’ That same letter is quoted in full in the 1972 book, Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters, by Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt. At the time of its publication, the letter was owned by Turner. Sadly, Henry drowned on July 30, 1865, when the steamer on which he was a passenger sank off the California coast as he was returning to Olympia from Washington, D.C., via Panama. He never received Mrs. Lincoln’s letter. Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and RRAuction COA.
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