History of the Collection
In 1905 a group of Fort Wayne, Indiana, business leaders led by
Arthur Hall founded The Lincoln National Life Insurance Company.
Hall, a lifelong admirer of Abraham Lincoln, desired that the
company be associated with the values Lincoln embodied.
Accordingly, he wrote Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, to
request a photograph of the president to use on the company
letterhead. Robert sent a photograph of his father, noting,
"I take pleasure in enclosing…what I regard as a very good
photograph of him."
In February, 1928, in honor of the 16th president's birthday, Hall
repaid the Lincoln family by creating the Lincoln Historical
Research Foundation. With Lincoln scholar Dr. Louis Warren as
director, the new Foundation began collecting Lincoln-related
material including several personal collections, all donated by
Lincoln National executives.
In February, 1931 - again, in honor of Lincoln's birthday - the
Foundation dedicated the Lincoln Museum and Library to house the
growing collection and make it available to the public.
Under the expert guidance of the four directors since 1928 - Dr.
Warren, R. Gerald McMurtry, Dr. Mark Neely, Jr., and Joan Flinspach
- a world-class research collection of documents, artifacts, books,
prints, photographs, manuscripts, and 19th-century art related to
Lincoln was created.
When Lincoln Financial Group announced in March 2008 that the
Lincoln Museum would close, Lincoln Financial Foundation, which
owned the museum collection, was adamant on two points. First, the
organization wanted the collection to be donated to an institution
capable of providing permanent care and broad public access.
Second, the collection would not be broken up among multiple
owners. In other words, this collection which had been built over
so many decades was not for sale and would remain intact.
In December of 2008 those conditions were met when one of the
largest private collections of Abraham Lincoln-related material in
existence was donated to the people of Indiana. Today the
Collection is housed in two institutions, the Indiana State Museum
in Indianapolis and the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne.
This allows the Collection to live on in its entirety, available to
the public in various exhibits at all times.