Lincoln’s notes fetch $3 million for Dryden (NY) library

[Muttocracy]

(Dryden is a village of about 1800 people near Ithaca and Cortland - here's a photo of the little library)


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edit - forgot link - http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20090213/NEWS01/902130320

February 13, 2009

Lincoln’s notes fetch $3 million for Dryden library

Christie's auctions 1864 manuscript

By Stacey Shackford
Correspondent

DRYDEN - A tiny local library had special reason to celebrate the bicentennial birthday of Abraham Lincoln Thursday after a record-breaking auction sale netted it $3 million.

Dryden's Southworth Library had been holding on to the original handwritten manuscript of Lincoln's 1864 re-election address for more than 80 years but decided to cash in on renewed interest in the president who won the Civil War and abolished slavery.

The rare document was the showpiece item at a special auction at Christie's New York, where it attracted a winning bid of $3 million, just reaching its estimate of $3 million to $4 million.

...

Now the association can start deciding how to spend the money. The plan is to build a new addition on to the back of the tiny William Henry Miller-designed building, which has only four rooms and a closet-sized toilet crammed into a space below the tower and is not completely accessible to wheelchair users.

The money will also be used to start an endowment to help cover operating expenses for the library, which struggles with a shoestring budget of just more than $100,000 per year.

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Kept in a secured, off-site location, the original document had previously been displayed only once, during the country's bicentennial celebration in 1976.

The manuscript was given to John Dwight, Congressman from Dryden, by Lincoln's son, Robert, in 1916, in appreciation of Dwight's efforts to secure Congressional funding for the Lincoln Memorial Project in Washington, D.C. Dwight's father, Jeremiah, also a former Congressman, had been the first president of The Southworth Library Association, and his widow presented it to the library after his death.

It was valued so highly because it was one of the last opportunities to acquire a complete handwritten speech Lincoln manuscript, as most are already in the Library of Congress or other institutions.


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[Adsos Letter]

1. Nice!

[frebrd]

2. Good for Dryden!

I used to live just up the road in Cortland. ;)

[poverlay]

3. Very cool. If anyone is interested in Lincoln trivia and such, I highly recommend Sarah Vowell's

book: "Assassination Vacation". It was a very good book filled with Lincoln trivia that I'd never heard of. She would love this story/post.