Author Archives: editor

Abraham Lincoln reading list (ALPLM)

Posted on October 16, 2013 by editor

As of 2013, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum had posted the following list of books for further reading about Lincoln. Other suggestions are available at the museum’s information desk. Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, … Continue reading →

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Mary Lincoln

Posted on October 16, 2013 by editor

Mary Lincoln (1818-82) was a sad and complicated figure — an intelligent, ambitious and attractive young woman whose later life was bedeviled by tragedy and physical and emotional breakdown. Her life and her impact on her husband’s career and presidential … Continue reading →

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Lincoln-Herndon law office building, 1886 (photo)

Posted on October 16, 2013 by editor

Abraham Lincoln shared offices on the third floor of this building at Sixth and Adams streets with two of his three law partners — Stephen T. Logan, 1843-44, and William H. Herndon from 1844 to 1860. The second floor housed … Continue reading →

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Charles Lindbergh’s airmail flights

Posted on October 16, 2013 by editor

Before Charles Lindbergh became famous for his nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, he flew the U.S. mail between Springfield, Chicago and St. Louis for the Robertson Aircraft Corporation. The first official flight, piloted by Lindbergh, was … Continue reading →

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‘Springfield Magical’ (Vachel Lindsay)

Posted on October 16, 2013 by editor

“City of my discontent” summarizes in a phrase Vachel Lindsay‘s conflicted relationship with his home town. The poem that includes that line, “Springfield Magical,” was contained in Lindsay’s collection “General William Booth Enters into Heaven, and other poems,” 1919. In … Continue reading →

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‘Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight’ (Vachel Lindsay)

Posted on October 16, 2013 by editor

Vachel Lindsay‘s best-known poem, “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight,” was included in his collection The Congo and Other Poems. The collection was published in 1914, and “Walks” is eerily prescient about the disaster World War I would become. Abraham Lincoln … Continue reading →

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‘The Golden Book of Springfield’ (Vachel Lindsay)

Posted on October 16, 2013 by editor

The Golden Book of Springfield, Vachel Lindsay’s only novel, published in 1920, outlined Lindsay’s ethereal, mythopoetic expectations for the city of Springfield a century hence. (One of the few concrete predictions in Lindsay’s highly metaphorical view of the city’s future … Continue reading →

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‘On the Building of Springfield’ (Vachel Lindsay)

Posted on October 16, 2013 by editor

Poet Vachel Lindsay was confounded — not to say obsessed — with his hometown of Springfield. Some of his best-known lines about the city are contained in his 1908 poem, “On the Building of Springfield.” LET not our town be … Continue reading →

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Lithuanian marker, Enos Park

Posted on October 16, 2013 by editor

Drawn by coal mine jobs, several thousand Lithuanians emigrated to Sangamon County in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Enough of the immigrants had arrived by 1908 that they laid the cornerstone for  their own national Catholic church, St. … Continue reading →

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Lafore Lock

Posted on October 16, 2013 by editor

Note: This entry was significantly expanded in July 2021. Springfield’s Lafore Lock Post 755 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars is named after World War I U.S. Army Pvt. Farley Lafore Lock. Lock died Oct. 18, 1918, of wounds he … Continue reading →

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