Benjamin Stephenson Edwards (1818-1886)

Born in Kaskaskia, Benjamin was the youngest son of Ninian Edwards, Governor of the Illinois Territory and third governor of the state of Illinois. Benjamin received his education at Yale University and became the first citizen born in Illinois to graduate from that institution. While in New Haven he met Helen Dodge, the younger sister of his classmate Richard Dodge.  Benjamin and Helen were married in August of 1839. After a honeymoon in Buffalo, New York, they decided to settle in Springfield, Illinois, where Benjamin’s brother Ninian was an established politician.

Helen and Benjamin arrived in Springfield in January of 1840 and stayed with Ninian and his wife Elizabeth for a few weeks. This is where Helen met and befriended Mary Todd, who was staying with her sister Elizabeth.  Helen and Mary would remain friends their entire lives. Benjamin and Helen spent three years at a house on Adams and Fourth Streets, where their daughter Helen was born. In June of 1843 they moved into the house now known as Edwards Place. Two more daughters followed: Alice in 1844, and Mollie in 1848.

Benjamin was an attorney by profession. After arriving in Springfield he studied with Stephen T. Logan and briefly partnered with Edward D. Baker before going into partnership with John T. Stuart in 1843. That partnership remained intact until Stuart’s death in 1885. Benjamin met Abraham Lincoln more than 400 times in the courtroom, sometimes serving as co-counsel and sometimes as opposing counsel. Politically, Benjamin was a Whig until that party’s dissolution in the mid-1850s. He briefly cast his lot with the Republicans but ultimately found the abolitionist wing too radical for his comfort. By 1858, he had cast his allegiance with the Democratic party. That year he invited Stephen Douglas, a candidate for US Senate as well as a personal friend, to hold a rally on the grounds of Edwards Place.

In 1868 Benjamin was elected Judge of the Eighth Judicial Circuit, a post he held for a year and a half before resuming his law practice. At the time of his death in 1886 he was president of the Illinois State Bar Association.

John Todd (1787-1865)

John Todd was Mary Lincoln’s uncle and the de facto patriarch of the Springfield Todds. He was born in 1787 near Lexington, Kentucky.   Todd received an excellent education, first becoming  one of the earliest graduates of  Transylvania University in Lexington, then graduating from the Medical University of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.   He served in the War of 1812 as Surgeon General of the Kentucky troops before returning to Lexington to practice medicine.

On July 1, 1813, Todd married twenty-year-old Elizabeth Smith, daughter of a local minister.  Together, the Todds had seven children:  John (b. 1814), Francis (b. 1816), William (b. 1818), Elizabeth (b. 1825), Lockwood (b. 1826), Laura (b. 1828) and Frances (b. 1832).   Laura and Frances both died young: Laura at age four in 1832, and Frances in childbirth at age 19 in 1851.

In 1827 John Quincy Adams  appointed Todd Register of the General Land Office in Springfield, Illinois. He held this position until 1829, when he was removed for political reasons following the election of Andrew Jackson.  He practiced medicine in Springfield from then until his death in 1865 at age 77.

Dr. Todd had a complicated relationship with slavery.  In 1823-24 he campaigned vigorously against introducing slavery into Illinois, yet his household was served by an African-American indentured servant named Betsy.  He believed in gradual emancipation and the colonization of freed slaves.  When the Civil War broke out he staunchly supported the Union, despite his ties of friendship and family in slaveholding Kentucky.

Although he had a large and thriving medical practice, Dr. Todd never amassed much money.  He was careless about collecting money from those who could pay for his services and generous about forgiving the bills of those who could not afford to pay.  In the 1860 census he was listed as having $2,000 in real estate and only $500 in his personal estate.  (Abraham Lincoln, by contrast, had $5,000 in real estate and $12,000 in his personal estate).

Dr. Todd was beloved by Mary Lincoln and her sisters.  Indeed, Dr. Todd was the one who helped to smooth things over with the family when Mary announced with no warning that she intended to marry Abraham Lincoln.  According to  Katherine Helm’s The True Story of Mary, Wife of Lincoln:

"Mr. Lincoln meeting Mr. Ninan Edwards on the street told him that he and Mary had decided to be married quietly at Mr. Dresser's house that evening.

Mr. Edwards, feeling responsible for Mary, exclaimed: 'No, I am Mary's guardian and if she is married at all it must be from my house.'

Mary was consulted, and after some discussion she and Mr. Lincoln agreed to Mr. Edwards' wishes. It was a bright cool morning in November and Mary fairly flew to the home of her uncle, Dr. John Todd, who was much beloved by his nieces, being so calm and quiet and affable. 'Uncle,' she cried excitedly, 'you must go and tell my sister that Mr. Lincoln and I are to be married this evening,' and turning to her cousin Elizabeth Todd, she asked her to put on her bonnet and go with her to make some purchases.

When they reached the Edwards home there was great excitement coupled with no little indignation, that such news should have been announced so suddenly that there was not time to make formal and suitable preparations for a wedding. But Dr. Todd was a suave and diplomatic advocate for Mary's cause and soon had them all in smiling good-humor.”[1]

 

Dr. Todd was known for his “expansive heart, calm temperament, and native grace of manners.”[2]  He died at the age of 78 on January 7, 1865, of congestion of the lungs.  His wife followed him in death just two months later. They are both buried in Oak Ridge cemetery.

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[1] Katherine Helm, The True Story of Mary, Wife of Lincoln (New York:  Harper Publishing, 1928), 94.

[2] 21 January 1865, Daily Illinois State Journal.

Elizabeth "Bettie" Jane Stuart Brown (1838-1869)

Elizabeth "Bettie" Stuart was the oldest child of John T. Stuart and Mary Nash Stuart. John Stuart was Lincoln's first law partner and Mary Lincoln's first cousin. Bettie was born in July of 1838, nine months after her parents married. The same year she was born, her father defeated Stephen A. Douglas for a seat in Congress. John Stuart's departure for Washington in 1839 left his wife at home alone with the baby and his law partner Lincoln alone in the office with their legal practice. Lincoln often visited Mary Stuart to deliver letters and to visit with Bettie - at a year and a half old he called her a "tolerably nice fellow." [1]

In due time Bettie was joined by six siblings:  John, Virginia, Frank, Robert, Hannah, and Edwards.   As a teenager she attended school at the Monticello Female Seminary in Godfrey, IL.  This school was the favored place of female education for Springfield’s elite; at various times the daughters of Stephen T. Logan, Benjamin Edwards, and James Lamb were also students there.

On October 20, 1859, Bettie married a young local attorney named Christopher C. Brown.  The wedding was a large one, with more than 300 guests in attendance.  Among them was Abraham Lincoln, who had made a special trip back from court in Champaign County to attend the wedding.  The Lincolns gave Bettie and Christopher a silver plated coffee urn as a gift.  This urn is now in the collection of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

John T. Stuart and his law partner Benjamin S. Edwards soon extended an offer for Christopher to join their law partnership, which had existed since 1843.  The firm of Stuart, Edwards, and Brown was formed on the first day of January, 1860.  Bettie and Christopher moved to a small frame house on the corner of Jackson and Third Streets near the C & A railroad tracks.

On August 21, 1860, as Lincoln’s election to the Presidency drew near, Bettie gave birth to her first son, named Stuart for his grandfather John T. Stuart.  While pregnant with her second child, the family’s house burned down, ignited by a spark from a passing locomotive.  Bettie, Christopher, and Stuart lived with Bettie’s parents while their new house was being built.  Her second son was born May 31, 1863.  He was named Edwards, for her husband and father’s law partner, Benjamin S. Edwards. 

Bettie’s last son, Paul, was born January 20, 1868. Benjamin Edwards’s wife Helen wrote a letter to her daughter on January 23 in which she mentioned the news:  “Betty Brown has another boy – born last Sunday night.  I think Betty was disappointed that it was not a girl, but Chris says it is a splendid baby, and he has named it Paul.  Alice thought it must be after the Apostle, and I ventured to ask him, if this was so?  He replied ‘yes, I guess it was.’  I told him, the male tribe of Brown’s was so large, I suppose he thought all the common names had been used up in the family.  Well said he ‘that is so, and I must hit upon uncommon names.’”[2]  

Bettie Stuart Brown died on March 2, 1839, at 3 pm, of dysentery.  She was thirty years old, and had been ill for twelve days.  Conscious until the very end, she had given directions for her burial and dictated messages to all her friends and relatives.  Her funeral was held the next day at the First Presbyterian Church.[3]

She is buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery.  Her last words are etched on her tombstone:  “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.”

 

 

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[1] Abraham Lincoln to John T. Stuart, 12 December 1839.

[2] Helen Edwards to Helen Edwards Condell, 23 January 1868.

[3] Illinois State Journal, 3 March 1869.