The rest of the story

Yesterday, I told you about a practical joker who used to play Lincoln's New Salem acquaintance, Jack Armstrong, in the production,"Abe Lincoln in Illinois."

Years ago, the joker, John "Jay" Slaven, left a note in a chair directing the finder to a lead chest with a treasure of gold coins. Here's a follow-up to that tale.

After columnist Dave Bakke's stories about the treasure hunt ran in The State Journal-Register, one of Slaven's descendants came forth with the news that he has the coins described in the letter. They aren't buried after all.

It's a tough break for the finder of the letter and the man whose lot she's digging up, but good deal for the guy who inherited the coins. Check out Bakke's story to learn more.

The owner of the lot does have a bit of buried treasure though - a bunch of old bottles. Gee, maybe he could say, "These bottles belonged to Abraham Lincoln," and cash in on eBay. People have made stranger and more outlandish claims.

Clary's Grove boy gets last laugh

Tales of Lincoln's New Salem years have always been among my favorite Lincoln lore, discounted, of course, by the knowledge that much of what we hear about that era is tainted through memories twisted by time and gilded with an aura of grandiosity. As Billy Herndon conducted his oral history project with New Salem residents, Lincoln became larger than life - and so did many of the tales and the characters.

Ya gotta like those Clary's Grove boys though - the ornery critters who came out of the woods like mountain lions ready to kick and scratch and wrestle their way to a place of authority in the little village. Yet, according to legend, it was the railsplitter Lincoln who outwrestled them and earned their lifelong respect, which they demonstrated by electing him captain in the Black Hawk War.

Trick or treasure

One of my longtime favorite columnists is Dave Bakke of The State Journal-Register. He ran a column earlier this week about some folks who were digging for gold right in the heart of Springfield, Ill. The short of it is that this lady bought an old chair at an auction and found a note about buried treasure on 5th Street in Springfield. She actually started excavating the lot to look for it! For the long of it, read Bakke's version.

The story gets better, though. Bakke heard from a former State Journal-Register employee who remembered a practical joker at the State Journal-Register. Former classified ad manager John “Jay” Slaven just happened to use the pen Chauncey Wolcott to sign his practical jokes. Who was the author of the treasure note? You guessed it - none other than good old Chauncey.

Unfortunately, Slaven passed away in 1976, so the treasure hunter can't ask him if this was but another of his fun-filled pranks. She's going "crazy" trying to decide if she should keep on digging.

As a Lincoln buff, I tend to see stories in relation to Lincoln's legacy and legends. And I'm thinking Clary's Grove boy Jack Armstrong (pictured above) would have been pretty proud of old Jay Slaven for this bit of orneriness. You see, Slaven performed for years in the play "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" His role - Jack Armstrong! Don't you suppose Jack, Jay and Abe are up there snickering at this one?

Clearing the thickets and building the nest

If you visit my blog regularly, you’ve surely noticed the lack of entries of late. Or, if you’re a new visitor, you may be wondering why you should return to a blog that hasn’t had a new entry for two weeks.

First, let me apologize. I know many of you have come to look forward to the little morsels I find about Abraham Lincoln or Lincoln books and events. I, in turn, look forward to sharing.

Last October, while I was taking a community college course about Lincoln, I began this blog. As I was learning, I was sharing. It just seemed selfish not to. I love learning and I love “teaching.”

Writing, I believe, is a form of teaching. The writer’s classroom consists not of desks in a room or seats in a lecture hall, but words on a page, a computer monitor or, now, even the screen of a mobile device. It’s amazing how this classroom has grown.

So, don’t worry. This isn’t a last blog post. What it is, however, is a window into the past and a lens looking toward the future.

Bringing dreams to life
“Out there, somewhere, there’s a dream. You just have to catch it.”

In my life, I’ve chased and caught many of the same dreams most people pursue – someone to share my life with, a home of our own, children, a career.

Along the way, I’ve seen lots of our shared dreams come true, and I’ve pursued some individual ones as well. Here are just a few of my own:

• As I pursued my other dreams, I’d set my college education aside midstream. I got back on board and finished it when I was 41 and a brand-new grandmother.
• I wanted to write for a newspaper. In 1998, that dream came true when I had my first freelance book review published in The State Journal-Register, the paper Lincoln called his friend.
• As I learned of the plans for a Springfield (Ill.) library and museum honoring the 16th President, I looked forward to it for years. I was the seventh person in line on the day it opened to the public and wrote of the experience for two central Illinois newspapers.
• I started a seven-year plan in 2002, when I first learned of the celebrations planned for the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth. I wrote, “I want to be doing significant Lincoln-related work by his 200th birthday.” I had to set this plan aside for awhile, and worried it was a dream that wouldn’t come true. Yet, as dreams often do, when things began to fall into place – the Lincoln course, the blog, the opportunity to attend many Lincoln-related events – it was better than I’d ever imagined possible.

The next dream – even bigger than the rest
With other dreams behind me, I’m now ready to move on to the next – and it’s a big one!

I’ll soon begin work on my own Lincoln books. I know it will be a lot of long days, short nights and painful battles making words work together just so. It will also require research beyond anything I’ve ever done in the past – making sure no stone is unturned, perusing hundreds of existing works on Lincoln and my proposed related subjects, spending long hours pouring over primary sources, trying to find some truth in all the myth and everything mythic that surrounds this subject who is gargantuan.

Before I begin
Before I begin, however, I must make sure conditions are right. I can think of endless imagery to describe what I’m going through right now, but two come to mind most strongly – a thicket and a nest. Let me tell you why.

Those of you who know me know I’m not a person who has just one thing going on at a time. I’ve never just gone to work, come home at night and settled into the nest. I’ve nearly always had another job or obligation, including but not limited to, apartments, school, and outside interests.

I’m also one of those people who buys magazines boasting, “Organize your life,” on the front cover, but then adds that volume to the stack in the box in the closet. It’s topped by two other boxes before the next “Conquer clutter” volume finds its way into the house. Creating order has always taken a back burner to all the other things I wanted to or had to do. And, I’ve always saved all those things I “might need for a story some day.” Never mind that I couldn’t have found them anyway. Just knowing they were there somewhere was comforting – sort of.

What wasn’t comforting was realizing I couldn’t move forward without clearing the way. I knew I had to clear the thicket before I could truly forge my Lincoln path. So, folks, that’s why I’ve been absent from cyberspace. I’m sorting and purging and organizing the things I’ve gathered in the past.

The image accompanying this blog post is a thicket behind the lean-to on a barn at New Salem. As I looked at it, I remembered some of the stories I’d read in John Hallwas’s Western Illinois University course, Literature of Illinois.

When early settlers came to Illinois, they often encountered such scenes and had to forge through the thickets and bramble bushes to get to the beautiful virgin prairie lying on the other side. I imagined what it must have been like for Lincoln and his family as they moved westward. And, then, the thicket became a symbol for me. Clear the path, Ann, and you can start your journey. You can write your book.

So, I’m currently working to get all those things I “might need someday” well organized so I can find them when I do. And, as I do, I’m building the nest where my books will be germinated, incubated and hatched.

Still learnin’ and comin’ back
While I’m spending evenings and weekends on this other project, I haven’t set my quest for new Lincoln knowledge aside, though. I’m listening to books on tape on my commute to work and reading the latest Lincoln books over lunch and when I can steal a few minutes here and there. You’ll hear all about them eventually.

So, please, come back. I will. In the meantime, if you haven’t read all my previous posts, please do. I’ve written more than 170 articles about Lincoln since last October. Though a few are time-sensitive, most are not. Please scroll down on the left-side of the blog to the Labels area or the Blog Archive, or just use the Search at the top left to seek a Lincoln topic in which you’re interested. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll find something you’ll enjoy reading.

And, don’t worry. I’m not leaving you. I will be blogging again soon, even as I begin research on my books. Until then, please, continue your quest to learn more about Lincoln. I’m continuing mine.

© Copyright 2009 Ann Tracy Mueller. All rights reserved.

New Salem times seven

President Lincoln, thank Governor Pat Quinn and the General Assembly for the supplemental appropriations bill that will allow visitors to see your old stomping grounds seven days a week.

Yep, that’s right folks. New Salem will be open every day beginning May 15, 2009 – and with additional seasonal staff. They’re going to make your visit memorable in this bicentennial year, so head on down there and step back into the world of Lincoln, Ann Rutledge, Mentor Graham and the Clary’s Grove Boys. (As of today, the website does not yet reflect the new hours.)

To learn more about New Salem:

• And the expanded hours, see Ann Gorman’s article in today’s State Journal-Register.
• Read an engaging little book, Lincoln’s New Salem, written by Benjamin Thomas. His single volume, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography, is still among the best after more than 50 years. Guess Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame must think so, too, as he edited the most recent edition of that one.

© Copyright 2009 Ann Tracy Mueller. All rights reserved.

Where is Ann?

For years now, I've faithfully read the work of a talented, insightful, entertaining columnist, Dave Bakke of the State Journal-Register. You'll want to read his column today to hear more about where Lincoln's first love, Ann Rutledge, was once buried in Old Concord Cemetary near Petersburg - and, some folks think, might still be.

Even if Ann isn't buried there, there are plenty of other New Salem residents still resting there, as Bakke points out:

"There is Jack Armstrong, the roughest of the rowdy Clary’s Grove Boys who Lincoln wrestled to a draw. Armstrong’s was the one Harmening most wanted to find.

Here also are members of the Berry family, descendants of William Berry, who owned the New Salem store with Lincoln.

John Clary, leader of the Clary’s Grove Boys and other members of the Clary family; Jacob Short, Lincoln’s friend; Joshua Short, Revolutionary War soldier; and Ann Rutledge’s father, James, one of the founders of New Salem. They are all buried here."

Unfortunately, the cemetery lies off the beaten path in the middle of a farmer's field. Too bad. Two hundred years after Lincoln's birth, there are still plenty of us studying Lincoln and those formative New Salem years. It would be nice to see where those who touched his life were laid to rest, and as Bakke's source, Bill Harmening, former Menard County sheriff’s deputy, pointed out, to stand where Lincoln stood.

© Copyright 2009 Ann Tracy Mueller. All rights reserved.

Learning with Lincoln

Forgive me for not posting for a few days. I've been busy learning with Lincoln -- and with so many others who forged the path before me.

Lincoln - the student or the teacher?
I'm currently working on my term paper for my class at Heartland College. My topic is Lincoln and his mentors. I spent this weekend doing lots of online research and reading in books about the teacher at New Salem, Mentor Graham. Though Lincoln was already an adult at New Salem, his schooling to that point had been less than a year.

Lincoln befriended the village teacher, Mentor Graham, or perhaps Graham befriended him. Either way, as Lincoln delved into his studies - of grammar, of surveying, of law - and read books on a wide range of topics, Graham was there. If the sources I'm reading are to be believed, the two also spent hours discussing many of the topics which would be important or confusing to Lincoln throughout his life - internal improvements, slavery, religion.

The primary book I read today, Mentor Graham: The Man Who Taught Lincoln, by Kunigunde Duncan and D. F. Nikols, was written in 1944, and much of it may be anecdotal, based on myth, stories told by minds that have reshaped them, and hearsay. Yet, I came away believing that there were two students here. I think Graham learned as much in many ways as his student did.

Lincoln Studies Center and Lincoln Studies.com
Those of you who have been following my blog know how much I admire, laud and appreciate the work of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College. Drs. Rodney Davis, Douglas Wilson and their colleagues do amazing research there and have made invaluable contributions to the study of Lincoln. One work alone, Herndon's Informants, is perhaps one of the most valuable tools for any Lincoln scholar's bookshelf. I could devote several posts to their work and likely will.

I found another valuable research tool this weekend, though. There is an ambitious young PhD candidate at Southern Illinois University, Samuel P. Wheeler. Wheeler has created a website titled Lincoln Studies: Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War, which is out of this world in getting students of Lincoln to the sources they need. His Research Links section takes you to nearly any online source possible without the access provided by colleges and universities to their students, including thousands of newspaper articles about Lincoln. Wheeler’s site, http://www.lincolnstudies.com/, was a big help to me this weekend. I know I’ll use it over and over again.

Can’t go wrong
Whether you’re seeking the experience Drs. Davis and Wilson have accumulated over nearly half a century, or the sources to which a budding scholar will guide you, remember two words – Lincoln Studies – and seek both as valuable contributions to your work in the world of Lincoln. I will.