As a girlhood companion remembered her, Mary Todd was vivacious and impulsive,
with an interesting personality--but "she now and then could not restrain a
witty, sarcastic speech that cut deeper than she intended...." A young lawyer
summed her up in 1840: "the very creature of excitement." All of these
attributes marked her life, bringing her both happiness and tragedy.

Daughter of Eliza Parker and Robert Smith Todd, pioneer settlers of Kentucky,
Mary lost her mother before the age of seven. Her father remarried; and Mary
remembered her childhood as "desolate" although she belonged to the aristocracy
of Lexington, with high-spirited social life and a sound private education.

Just 5 feet 2 inches at maturity, Mary had clear blue eyes, long lashes,
light-brown hair with glints of bronze, and a lovely complexion. She danced
gracefully, she loved finery, and her crisp intelligence polished the wiles of
a Southern coquette. 

Nearly 21, she went to Springfield, Illinois, to live with her sister Mrs.
Ninian Edwards. Here she met Abraham Lincoln--in his own words, "a poor nobody
then." Three years later, after a stormy courtship and broken engagement, they
were married. Though opposites in background and temperament, they were united
by an enduring love--by Mary's confidence in her husband's ability and his
gentle consideration of her excitable ways.

Their years in Springfield brought hard work, a family of boys, and reduced
circumstances to the pleasure-loving girl who had never felt responsibility
before. Lincoln's single term in Congress, for 1847-1849, gave Mary and the
boys a winter in Washington, but scant opportunity for social life. Finally her
unwavering faith in her husband won ample justification with his election as
President in 1860.

Though her position fulfilled her high social ambitions, Mrs. Lincoln's years
in the White House mingled misery with triumph. An orgy of spending stirred
resentful comment. While the Civil War dragged on, Southerners scorned her as a
traitor to her birth, and citizens loyal to the Union suspected her of treason.
When she entertained, critics accused her of unpatriotic extravagance. When,
utterly distraught, she curtailed her entertaining after her son Willie's death
in 1862, they accused her of shirking her social duties.

Yet Lincoln, watching her put her guests at ease during a White House
reception, could say happily: "My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl,
and I...fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out."

Her husband's assassination in 1865 shattered Mary Todd Lincoln. The next 17
years held nothing but sorrow. With her son "Tad" she traveled abroad in search
of health, tortured by distorted ideas of her financial situation. After Tad
died in 1871, she slipped into a world of illusion where poverty and murder
pursued her.

A misunderstood and tragic figure, she passed away in 1882 at her sister's home
in Springfield--the same house from which she had walked as the bride of Abraham
Lincoln, 40 years before.