Curated Groupings

The Lincoln Family Album: Four Generations of an American Family

Like many middle-class women of her era, Mary Todd Lincoln kept a photograph album.  The introduction of small, inexpensive carte-de-visite photographs and the specially constructed albums to hold them had made collecting photographs popular and affordable by 1860, and Mary collected photographs of her famous contemporaries as well as pictures of her family and friends.  Her album was passed down to Robert Todd Lincoln and his descendants, with each generation adding family photographs.

The Lincoln Family Album Collection contains more than 600 photographs collected by four generations of the Lincoln family.  You can view the entire collection on this website by entering "LFA" in the Collection Search box.  Click on the images above for a sampling of Lincoln family photographs.