SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) – The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation owes more than $9 million for a collection of artifacts related to Abraham Lincoln and says it might have to sell some of it to erase the debt.
An Associated Press review of the collection shows a bevy of items only tangentially related to the 16th president.
They include theater playbills from the father of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth; an 1874 invitation to the wedding of the daughter of President Ulysses Grant; a 1928 memo to the wife of the law partner of Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln.
New Jersey-based appraiser Brian Kathenes says such items wouldn’t command the price that Lincoln’s presidential seal or documents in Lincoln’s hand would.
The museum foundation wants Illinois to provide funds to keep the collection intact.
