Lincoln Editor

              October - December 2002 Volume 2   Number 4
EXTENSIVE MAIL SURVEY TO LOCATE ALL LINCOLN DOCUMENTS
In January 2003, staff at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln
will begin to mail a survey to thousands of repositories
that  have  or  may  have  documents  written  by  or  to
Abraham Lincoln. We thank those institutions that have
already  sent  us  lists  of  their  Lincoln  holdings  and
encourage others to do so.
Any  private  collectors  owning  Lincoln
documents are also invited to send us information about
their holdings by mail, e-mail, or through the form on
our  website  at www.papersofabrahamlincoln.org. An
exhaustive  survey  of  the  location  of  all  Lincoln
documents will enable us to make the Papers of Abraham
Lincoln as comprehensive as possible.
The project seeks information on any document
written by Abraham Lincoln, written to him, or reviewed
by him during the course of his entire lifetime (1809-
1865). Collecting information on the whereabouts of each
document will aid us in planning visits to repositories to
capture high-quality color images for transcription and
presentation.
MCDERMOTT CHOSEN FOR NEW POSITION
In August  and  September,  the  Papers  of Abraham
Lincoln conducted a search for a new Assistant Editor.
Funds for the position came from the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential  Center  for  Governmental  Studies  at  the
University of Illinois at Springfield, which co-sponsors
the Papers of Abraham Lincoln. The project
received over two dozen applications from
across  the  United  States  and  even  from
Africa and Europe. The search committee,
composed  of  Director  Daniel W.  Stowell,
Assistant  Director  John A.  Lupton,  State
Historian Thomas F. Schwartz, and Editorial
Board members Cullom Davis and Phillip
S.  Paludan,  reviewed  the  applications  and
interviewed five finalists. After evaluating
many  strong  candidates,  the  committee
chose  Ms.  Stacy  Pratt  McDermott  of  the
Lincoln Legal Papers to fill the new position.
Ms. McDermott received her B.A. and M.A. in
history from the University of Illinois at Springfield.  She
is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois
at  Urbana-Champaign.  She  has  nearly  eight  years  of
documentary editing experience with the Lincoln Legal
Papers and the Papers of Abraham Lincoln.  McDermott
has  spoken  widely  on  Lincoln s  legal  career  and  has
published  several  articles  and  chapters,  including
 Dissolving  the  Bonds  of  Matrimony: Women  and
Divorce in Sangamon County, Illinois, 1837-
1861,  and  The Law in an Illinois Corner:
The  Impact  of  the  Law  on  an Antebellum
Family,  in In Tender Consideration: Women,
Families, and the Law in Abraham Lincoln s
Illinois  (2002)  and    An  Outrageous
Proceeding : An Analysis  of  a  Northern
Lynching  and  the  Enforcement  of  Anti-
Lynching  Legislation  in  Illinois,   in  the
Journal of Negro History (1999).
The choice of Ms. McDermott as the new
Assistant  Editor  gave  the  project  the
opportunity  to  fill  the  position  she  vacated
with  another  strong  candidate  from  this  pool  of
applicants.  Dr. Dennis K. Boman, who will be featured
in our next Lincoln Editor, will join the project in January
2003.