SMU student discovers unknown Lincoln documents

WINONA, Minn. — Saint Mary’s University history student David Spriegel is making national headlines this week for uncovering two original, previously unknown documents written in 1844 by a then up-and-coming lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

Spriegel of Gurnee, Ill., was on the second week of his summer internship at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., when he made the discovery.

The following press release was sent by David Blanchette, (217) 558-8970, from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum:

I found two unknown Lincoln documents
on my summer vacation

Presidential Library intern discovers previously unknown documents
written by Abraham Lincoln in 1844

SPRINGFIELD – When the question is asked, “What did you do on your summer vacation,” no one will be able to top one college student’s story.

David Spriegel of Gurnee, Illinois, a student at Saint Mary’s University in Winona, Minnesota, was on the second week of a summer internship at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, when he discovered two original, previously unknown documents written in 1844 by an up-and-coming lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

“It was really a surprise,” said Spriegel. “I didn’t think it could be true.”

In late May, when he began to organize a four-inch-tall stack of old documents in the Presidential Library’s Manuscripts Department, Spriegel noticed a small inscription on two of them: “The above memorandum is in the handwriting of Abraham Lincoln. – M. Hay.” Milton Hay had clerked in the Stuart and Lincoln Law Office as a young man and would have recognized Lincoln’s script. Hay’s notations seem to date from late in his life, perhaps the 1880s.

Spriegel called the discovery to the attention of his supervisor, Glenna Schroeder-Lein, manuscripts librarian at the Presidential Library. She immediately contacted experts with the Papers of Abraham Lincoln project housed at the Library. Daniel Stowell and Stacy McDermott of that project confirmed Lincoln’s handwriting, as did James Cornelius, curator of the Lincoln Collection.

The two documents, bearing no other signature or date, are long lists of small parcels of land being bought and sold amongst a variety of early Springfield settlers, including Ninian Wirt Edwards and William Wallace (both of whom ended up as Lincoln’s brothers-in-law), Stacy Opdycke, Jesse B. Thomas, Stephen T. Logan, and others. The papers lay among several land warrantees that had been donated to the Library by a descendant of one of those settlers.

After some research Cornelius determined that the documents were part of the legal case Opdycke et al. v. Godfrey et al., from Christian County, Illinois, and that the lands in question are west of Taylorville, in that county. McDermott believes that Lincoln likely used these two pages of memoranda to prepare a petition he filed to initiate the case in March 1844. The documents will be available this fall for viewing, alongside those from the 5,600 other Lincoln legal cases, at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln website, www.papersofabrahamlincoln.org.

Meanwhile, the two documents join 1,580 other original Abraham Lincoln manuscripts at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

This is not the first time that a young student has made such a thrilling discovery. In 1952, 14-year-old Ron Rietveld, a student helper at the Illinois State Historical Library, the forerunner of the Lincoln Presidential Library, discovered the only existing original photograph of Lincoln lying in his coffin following his assassination. Rietveld later became a professor of history at California State University – Fullerton, where he had a student, Glenna Schroeder-Lein, the same woman who is supervising Spriegel on his summer 2011 internship at the Presidential Library.

“I never dreamed that my summer internship would bring me into direct contact with an original, previously unknown Lincoln document,” Spriegel said. “I’m happy that the discovery will increase our knowledge of Lincoln’s legacy.”

Visit www.presidentlincoln.org for more information about the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.