Lincoln Editor

              January - March 2007 Volume 7 Number 1
NEW MEMBERS OF “THE LINCOLN CORPS OF DISCOVERY”
“HAVE YOU ANY FARTHER NEWS FROM THE WEST?”
On February 19, assistant editor Susan Krause and her
husband, Ron Krause, departed for a nine-state tour
of the west and southwest to scan Lincoln documents for
the Papers of Abraham Lincoln. Ron Krause volunteered
his services for the trip, which logged 5,640 miles and took
twenty-two days.
The Krauses traveled to the states of Oklahoma,
Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado,
Kansas, and Missouri. They scanned documents, searched
collections, and requested scanned document images in
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Assistant editors Susan Krause and Christopher Schnell
became the second and third members of the project’s
Lincoln Corps of Discovery. Both Krause and Schnell
located previously unknown Lincoln documents in the
microfilmed series of presidential appointment papers located
at the National Archives.
The document that Krause located was a letter
Abraham Lincoln wrote on December 7, 1849, to John M.
Clayton, U.S. Secretary of State under President Zachary
Taylor, endorsing Dr. Edward A. Guilbert for a foreign
mission. In the letter, Lincoln noted that while he was not
personally acquainted with Dr. Guilbert, he was well
acquainted with the authors of the other letters of
endorsement, John D. Caton and T. Lyle Dickey, and that
he did not doubt that Dr. Guilbert was “worthy of all they
say in his behalf.”
The document that Schnell located was a letter of
recommendation by Lincoln written on March 12, 1849, to
Secretary of State John M. Clayton on behalf of Mary
Lincoln’s cousin John C. Richardson. Richardson was a
lawyer living in Booneville, Missouri, and he desired the office
of U.S. marshal for the district of Missouri. Richardson later
served on the Missouri Supreme Court.
The Lincoln Corps of Discovery award, which is a
brass magnifying glass in an engraved hardwood case,
recognizes the sleuthing skills of those researchers who have
located a Lincoln document that the repository staff did not
know they had. Congratulations to Krause and Schnell for
their efforts.
twenty-three libraries, museums, and repositories, and in
seven private collections.
Among the documents scanned were appointments
and commissions, as well as notations from Lincoln to
discharge soldiers, replies to autograph seekers, legal
documents, telegrams, and military passes. One document
was a draft of a telegram by Lincoln on July 13, 1862, to
Mary Lincoln in West Point, New York. The telegram was
probably written in haste, as Lincoln was preoccupied with
Chris Schnell and Susan Krause
show off their new magnifying glasses.