Here is an interesting article about Elizabeth Todd Edwards from Feather Foster, Presidential Historian. Elizabeth is often overlooked by Lincoln historians, yet she played an important role in Mr. & Mrs. Lincoln’s lives.
Elizabeth Todd Edwards was the oldest of Mary Lincoln’s siblings.
The Todd Family
Robert and Eliza Todd of Lexington, KY had six children who lived to adulthood. Mary was the fourth. Eliza died when Mary was only seven; eighteen months later, Robert remarried, and the family dynamic was changed forever with the arrival of a new stepmother – followed by eight more little Todd offspring.
Elizabeth Todd Edwards, Mary Lincoln’s eldest sister, as a young Springfield matron.
Elizabeth Todd (1813-1888), the eldest, was the quintessential prototype of the “first-born syndrome.” She took on the responsibility of quasi-mothering her younger siblings, and escaping the strained household at sixteen by marriage to Ninian Edwards, Jr., the son of the first governor of Illinois. She moved to Springfield, its new capital, with a goal of creating a social scene befitting a state capital – practically from scratch. In the early 1830s, it was…
View original post 920 more words
The Late Unpleasantness: A Civil War Blog 