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| The Lincolns soon after their marriage. |
Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln believed in spirit communication and held regular seances in the White House and at the homes of local mediums. One ancedote concerns the president and first lady's attendance at a seance by Nettie Coburn Maynard a friend's house in Georgetown. During the seance, a concert grand piano weighing nearly a ton reportedly levitated while Lincoln and three other men sat on it to hold it down.After the death of their son Willie in 1862, Mary Todd frequented mediums and clairvoyants to contact the boy and his brother Eddie, who died in 1850 at the age of three. In October of that year, Mary wrote to her sister that "Willie lives." He came, she said, to her bedroom every night and smiled at her. "Little Eddie is sometimes with him, and twice he has come with our brother, Alex."
After Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, Mary attempted to stay in contact with her husband through private readings and seances. Whether she achieved genuine communication with the late president will never be known. Mary also visited the studio of William Mumler, a Boston engraver who claimed to photograph the dead. This photo (right) of Mary with the ghostly Lincoln was the result of her sitting with Mumler.
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| Willie Lincoln |
In 1869, Mumler was arrested for public fraud, larceny, and obtaining money under false pretenses. The highly-publicized trial ended in dismissal for lack of evidence. Was Mumler a fraud? Probably, although many of his sitters claimed to recognize loved ones in Mumler's photos who had never been photographed in life. Others claimed that some of the "spirits" in his pictures had been identified as living models.
For further research on Mumler and his "spirit" images, visit the American Museum of Photography's The Mumler Mystery. This site includes many examples of Mumler's carte de visites with background on each image.
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