Slipping the Chains of Matrimony: Abraham Lincoln and Mary Owens

Northeast corner of Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church

Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church

One of the things I enjoy is finding new ways to get home.  Driving the backroads is a welcome break from the US-169 to I-29 to I-435 to MO-45 to MO-9 and back every day coming to and from work.  County Highway P east from Weston, MO is a pretty little drive with lots of fields and houses, old and new.  Around one turn of Hwy P is a cemetery with some noticeably old headstones intermingled with newer stones.  Next to that is a quaint little one-story brick church with a gabled roof based in the Greek Revival style.

Historic marker

Pleasant Ridge United Baptist Church was built in 1844 by a Missionary Baptist splinter group from a Old School/Hard Shell Baptist congregation.  John W. Vineyard, Joseph Nower, William Gabbert, and Jacob Cox each provided a quarter-section of land (center of Section 5; Township 53N; Range 35W) to be used to build the church and cemetery.  The bricks were fired in a kiln located on the Vineyard farm.  The material was likely from the Pennsylvanian Era Weston Shale, which is about 80 feet thick and outcrops between the Stanton Limestone formation and the Iatan Limestone.  When the building was constructed, it had a balcony gallery for slaves and a door in the south wall (now bricked over) for access to the cemetery.  The builder was John Sanford and the founding minister was Rev. Albert P. Williams.

South side of church with bricked over door in gap between windows

The church has been used by a congregation for most of its existence.  The building survived a roof collapse in 1861 and fire in 1868.  It was likely in this time frame that the slave gallery disappeared.  Metal Corinthian columns were installed in 1882, the pews were installed in 1902, and globe lights date to the electrification of the building in 1930.  The building was not used from about 1939 to the 1950s, but has been occupied by a congregation ever since.

Mary Owens Vineyard

Mary Vineyard grave marker

You never know where you will stumble across the marker of a historically significant figure, but you'll almost always come across interesting headstones as you walk through a graveyard.  On my walk through the graveyard, I ran across the stones of what turned out to be some of the founding members of the church, the Vineyards.  At least one meeting that led to the founding of the church took place in  John Vineyard's log schoolhouse.  In all there were three Vineyard brothers: John, Jesse and Bryce (Brice).  The Vineyard brothers were educators and founded an academy located about a half mile to the south of the church.  The academy was known as Pleasant Ridge College.  The chapel of the college was used as a meeting place for the congregation while repairs were being made to the church following the 1861 roof collapse.

Jesse Vineyard's family headstones occupy a place of prominence towards the front of the cemetery and near the church.  One of the best preserved stones there is that of Mary S. Vineyard, Jesse's wife.  Jesse's partly broken headstone is next to Mary's.  He had died in 1862 and Mary followed in 1877.

New marker placed by Robert Bloch of the Block Foundation

Mary's grave had a newer marker in front of it and upon moving towards it, I found the stone to the left, which stated that Mary S. Vineyard was none other than Mary S. Owens Vineyard - the woman who had turned down (to his consternation AND relief) the marriage proposal of a young(ish) Abraham Lincoln.  Even though we are surrounded by memorials and burials of giants of western expansion, it seemed fantastic that this person I had read of in biographies of Lincoln was actually buried in the old Platte Purchase.  However, it takes just a cursory look at old letters to see that Mary Owens is indeed buried in Weston, MO.

So how does one meet an Abraham Lincoln, attract his attention and then turn down his proposal?  All of that seems to be a comedy of runaway circumstance viewed through the lens of what would become, not what was at that time.  While Abraham Lincoln was building his reputation, he was far from "The Great Emancipator" or "Savior of the Union" when all of this took place.

In 1831, while building a flatboat for Dennis Offut, Lincoln lived with a man named Bowling Green.  This man had lived in Kentucky, and knew the Hanks family fairly well.  He would judge that Abraham had inherited his good sense from his mother Nancy Hanks' family.  Lincoln grew close to Mr. Green and came to view him as a mentor and the father to whom he wished he had been born.  When Thomas Lincoln lay dying, Abraham refused to see him, but when Green died suddenly in 1842, Lincoln was profoundly affected and fell into a deep depression.  One of Mr. Green's neighbors was a woman named Elizabeth Abell.  Lincoln struck up a friendship with the Abell family and lived with them off and on in New Salem, Illinois for several years.

Abraham Lincoln c. 1847

After the death of Ann Rutledge in 1835 from typhoid fever (a woman thought by many to be Lincoln's first love), Lincoln became quite depressed, a sight that pained Mrs. Abell greatly.  When interviewed after Lincoln's assassination, she described him as social, lively, good natured, never rash, backwards, not eccentric but also not visionary.  She thought of him as the best natured man that she ever knew.  These qualities led her to try to play matchmaker between Lincoln and her sister, Mary Owens.  One of the stories is that Mrs. Abell told Lincoln in 1834 that she was going back to Kentucky and told him that she would bring her sister back if Lincoln agreed to marry the sister, to which he jokingly assented.

The proposition got a bit more real when Mrs. Abell left on her visit.  At this point, Lincoln was a bit excited.  He had met Mary Owens in 1833 briefly and recalled her as being a "handsome" woman, intelligent, good conversationalist and lively.  Reading letters to friends, you can see that he would lean to excitement, then dread.  When she got there in 1836/7, he noticed that she had gained quite a bit of weight, had lost some teeth, and somehow was not as animated as he remembered.  It may be also that he weighed the poverty of his upbringing with the wealth of the Owens family.  The difference in social position worried him a bit, but he entered into correspondence with her when he left for the state legislature in Vandalia, IL.   In the end, he was determined to keep his word but to his initial relief (followed by feeling insulted) Mary declined his proposal.  She would later say "I think I did on one occasion say to my sister, who was very anxious for us to be married, that I thought Mr. Lincoln was deficient in those little links which make up the great chain of woman's happiness."

Mary Owens left New Salem in 1838 and never wrote to Lincoln again.  She went back to Kentucky and married Jesse Vineyard in 1841/2.  This was probably a better match, as Jesse lived the academic life that was valued by the Owens family at the time. Jesse was well schooled in proper etiquette (a deficiency in the young Lincoln) as well as being well to do.  When he started the college at Pleasant Ridge, he was a slave-owning gentleman farmer.  The family retained much of its Kentucky flavor and it is said that Mary Vineyard's sons served the Confederacy during the Civil War, although I cannot substantiate that claim using available databases.  It would make almost as good a story as Lincoln's Confederate brothers-in-law and cousins!

Six degrees....

After this blog entry was published, one of my friends from high school, Gale Vineyard, wrote a note that Mary Owens Vineyard was her great-great-grandmother.  Good thing that I didn't go to elementary school with Gale.  I can see THAT show-and-tell day.  Me:  Here is my bust of Abraham Lincoln (Avon aftershave decanter).  Gale:  Here are my great-great-grandmother's letters from Abraham Lincoln!  How does a kid compete with that?  (Howls, Howls of laughter!).

Getting There

From MO-45 south of Weston, turn east onto Co Hwy P and follow about a mile and half to Woodruff Road.


Waypoint: Latitude: 39.432600 N; Longitude: 94.854612 W
Street Address: 18797 N Co Rd P, Weston, MO 

Further Reading

Abraham Lincoln, Mary Owens and the Accidental Engagement

Abraham Lincoln and Mary Owens

National Register of Historic Places Application

Mr. Lincoln and Friends

Mad as a hatter: The man who killed the man who killed Lincoln

I have been intrigued by the life of Abraham Lincoln as long as I can remember.  Maybe it was the stories of his boyhood arcing into the Presidency.  He was a kid just like me and a bit of an outsider just like me.  He wanted to get out from home and see the world.  Well, who really doesn't?

Through the years I have taken day trips to experience the unique, the offbeat, and just strange sights the world has to offer.  One of the strangest things I have seen a monument to is the hole, charitably referred to as a dugout, that Boston Corbett lived in following the Civil War.  

Gateway to monument near Concordia, KS

Who was Boston Corbett and why did he live in a hole?  He was the hatmaker who, as a sergeant in the Union Army shot John Wilkes Booth (counter to orders by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton) in the Garrett farm barn outside of Port Royal, VA in the early morning hours of 25 April, 1865.  A reading of his biography shows Corbett to be a truly disturbed individual who was periodically psychotic, most likely due to mercury poisoning, a common hazard of his vocation.

Born Thomas Corbett in London, England in 1832, he immigrated to the United States with his family in 1839.  Arriving in New York City, his family moved several times until they settled in Troy, NY.  As a teenager, Corbett apprenticed as a hatter.  The occupational exposure to mercury (II) nitrate used in feltmaking likely resulted in the eccentric behaviors exhibited throughout Corbett's adulthood.

Married as a young adult, his wife died giving birth to a daughter, who also died.  A devastated Thomas Corbett turned to alcohol, literally staggering throughout New England, until he met a street preacher in Boston, MA.  Urged to change his ways, Thomas paid heed, found a job as a hatter and eventually took to preaching and distributing religious literature on his own street corner.  He grew his hair and beard long, in imitation of Jesus.  He swore off liquor and sought to live a life of Christian devotion. Baptized by a Methodist Episcopal Church minister on 29th August 1858, Corbett renamed himself Boston in honor of the city in which he found salvation.

Narrative of Boston Corbett Dugout Marker

As is often the case in conversion, the pendulum of Corbett's life swung from a life of utter purposelessness and drunken stupor to hypervigilant religious zeal.  Whenever someone cursed in his presence, he would sing to God and pray, often interrupting his work.  Propositioned on 16 July 1858 by prostitutes while going home from a church meeting (and body parts responding in an earthly fashion), he used a pair of scissors to remove his own testicles in an effort to avoid temptation.  He took a meal, then attended a prayer meeting before seeking medical attention.  That is one tough (and unbalanced) fellow.

Civil War service

Enlisting as a private in Company I of the 12th Regiment of the New York Militia in April 1861, Corbett was soon at odds with military life.  Carrying a bible at all times, reading from it randomly and condemning soldiers and officers for swearing apparently doesn't mix well with military life.  After reprimanding Colonel Dan Butterfield (composer/arranger of "Taps") for using profanity, Corbett was arrested and held in stockade until such time as he would apologize to the colonel.  When no such apology was forthcoming, Butterfield relented and set Corbett free.  His continued insubordination eventually brought a court-martial, and Corbett was sentenced to be shot.  The sentence was reduced and he was discharged in August 1863.  

Matthew Brady photograph of Corbett, 1865

One would think that would be a lesson well-learned, but Corbett re-enlisted in Co. L of the 16th Regiment, New York Cavalry.  Stubbornly standing his ground during a fight with Mosby's Raiders, he was captured on 24 June 1864 at Culpeper, VA.  His bravery under fire earned the respect of the Confederate troops, who took Pvt. Corbett prisoner instead of executing him. At Andersonville, he stood as a model Christian and human, refusing to give in to the predatory environment of the prison camp.  After five months and suffering from dysentery, exposure and scurvy, Corbett was released in a November 1864 prisoner exchange.  Upon his return to his company, Corbett was promoted to sergeant.  After the war, Sgt. Corbett testified against the commandant of Andersonville, Capt. Henry Wirz.

On 24 April 1865, Corbett's regiment was given the task of apprehending Booth - Alive.  Stanton wanted answers as to the reasons for and extent of the conspiracy to kill President Lincoln.  Surrounding David Herold and Booth in a barn near Port Royal, VA on 26 April, the regiment captured the surrendering Herold, but Booth vowed to fight on.  The barn was set on fire in an attempt to flush Booth out, then a shot rang out.  Booth fell, with a shot in the back of the neck, his spinal cord severed.  Removed from the burning barn, Booth died of his injuries two hours later.

When questioned who fired the shot, Corbett immediately admitted that it was him.  When asked why he had disobeyed the direct order to take Booth alive, he said that "Providence directed me",  Under arrest and interrogated by Stanton, Corbett claimed that he thought Booth had raised his gun to shoot and he killed Booth to protect himself.  Seemingly satisfied, Stanton ordered his release, concluding that Booth's death had saved the country time and money in prosecuting him.  Corbett eventually collected $1,653.85 ($25,000 2015 value) in War Department reward money for Booth's capture.

Life after the Civil War

Following the war, Corbett traveled the East Coast as a hatter and lay minister.  His habit of interrupting work to pray and sing caused him to be unable to keep a job.  He then tried to capitalize on his fame as "Lincoln's Avenger", speaking to women's groups, Sunday schools and tent meetings about the shooting of Booth.  His rambling speeches and eccentric behavior resulting in his not being asked back to lecture again.  He became increasingly paranoid, worried about conspiracies against him from the government and Booth supporters.  At an 1875 reunion of Civil War soldiers, the fact of Booth's death was questioned, angering Corbett to the point of drawing a weapon.  He was promptly removed from the meeting before harm could come to him or others.

This was a repeating theme of postwar life for Boston Corbett.  After killing Booth, he expected to be hailed as a hero, the man who brought the assassin Booth to justice.  Instead, he found himself hated by men who expected to make a name for themselves in the prosecution of Booth, the target of death threats from Booth supporters and the suspect in a variety of conspiracy theories, including several that Booth was not actually dead.  Disillusioned, Corbett sought to separate himself from the well settled East Coast.

Boston Corbett built his dugout home on the side of this hill

In 1878, Corbett homesteaded land near Concordia in Cloud County, KS.  He constructed a crude "dugout" which was little more than a hole, located some sixty yards south of the current marker.  A crack shot, he could kill birds on the fly, leaving no doubt he could hit a fairly stationary backlit target exactly where he wanted.  His oddities followed him and he was intolerant of his neighbors and their children, and would brandish a firearm should any stray too close.  

During this time, he continued to preach informally.  He would attend church, then at the end of the service, inform the minister that "God wants me to say a few words".  By some accounts, he would remove the two six-shooters that he was carrying and place them on either side of the Bible on the lectern as he said his words.  In January 1887, he was appointed assistant doorkeeper at the Kansas House of Representatives in Topeka.  On February 15, convinced that  he was being discriminated against, he drew his pistol and chased officers out of the building.  He was declared insane the following day by a judge and sent to the Topeka Asylum for the Insane.  

Corbett escaped from the asylum on 26 May 1888 and after meeting with a fellow POW in Neodesha, KS rode off into history.  Although he claimed to be heading for Mexico, where he went nobody knows for sure.  It is thought that he might have built a cabin near Hinckley, MN where he perished in the Great Hinckley Fire on 1 September 1894.  It is a fact that a man named Thomas Corbett is listed as missing or as having died in the blaze.

The monument

Inoceramid clams in Corbett Dugout marker

In 1958, Boy Scout Troop 31 of Concordia built this monument to Corbett out of native stone from the Cretaceous Greenhorn Formation.  Inoceramid clams common to the Cretaceous Kansas seas can be seen on the monument itself and the steps leading to the monument.  The monument area is about a half mile east of Road 791 on the south side of Key Road.  No visible trace of the dugout is left, having been filled in or collapsed long ago.  The site of the dugout was once marked by a sign, but it had been removed and was laying next to the monument when we visited.  It is on private land, but can be accessed by gate.  A walk to the top of the hill reveals a huge expanse of prairie, cattle and windmills.  How much more Kansas could you get?

Please close the gates behind you.  We want no wandering cattle.

When the monument was built, two six-shooters were mounted into the concrete, but they, like Boston Corbett have since disappeared into the mists of time.

Space formerly occupied by pistols on Boston Corbett Monument

Traveling is a lot more fun with a partner, especially when you can bore them to tears with your own interests.  Through the years I have traveled with my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, cousins, friends, my wife (Nadienne) and sons (Christian and Benjamin).  This time it was Nadienne's turn to wonder "Where in the heck is he off to now?"

Me and my travel buddy, my wife Nadienne.

Getting There

The most common approach will be from I-70.  Take US-81 North from Salina, KS for about 41 mi., then east (right) onto Key Road (Co. Rd. 374) for about 3.5 miles.  The marker will be on the south (right) side of the road.

Waypoint: Latitude: 39.466263 N; Longitude: 97.598604 W
Street Address: 1718 County Rd. 374 (Key Rd.), Aurora, KS 67417

If the marker is still missing when you visit, here is a Google Earth view that shows where the sign was located in May 2014.

Further Reading

Roadside America listing

Washingtonian story about Boston Corbett

Kansaspedia Entry