If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.

— A. Lincoln, 1863

The Summer Moves

Abraham Lincoln, his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and their youngest son, Tad (born in 1853), lived in the cottage at the Soldiers' Home during the warm weather seasons of 1862, 1863, and 1864, and the family probably would have returned in 1865 if President Lincoln had not been assassinated in April of that year. The President and his family moved from the White House to the cottage between mid-June and early July each year, and stayed until the cooler weather of early November. They brought a substantial number of personal items from the White House to the cottage each summer. By one account, White House servants transported some 19 wagonloads of the family's belongings, including toys, furniture, and clothing, one year.1

Glimpses of the seasonal moves are found in several of President Lincoln's telegraph dispatches to his wife:

Mrs. A. Lincoln
Boston, Mass.

Washington
Nov. 9, 1862

Mrs. Cuthbert [a seamstress] & Aunt Mary [a nurse] want to move to the White House, because it has grown so cold at Soldiers Home. Shall they?

— A. Lincoln2


Mrs. A. Lincoln
New-York

Washington
June 29, 1864

All well. Tom [a White House servant] is moving things out.

— A. Lincoln3

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1Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1987), 227.

2Abraham Lincoln to Mary Todd Lincoln, cited in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Unmiversity Press, 1955), vol. V, 492.

3Abraham Lincoln to Mary Todd Lincoln, cited in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. VII, 417. "Tom" refers to one of the three White House servants: Thomas H. Cross, furnace man; Thomas Cross, doorkeeper; or Thomas Stackpole, watchman.

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