Though she led one of the most embattled lives of any United States first lady, Mary Ann Todd—the future Mrs. Abraham Lincoln—entered an auspicious situation when she was born into a wealthy Lexington family 200 years ago, on Dec. 13, 1818.
Her birth took place in the two-floor, nine-room Todd family home on Short Street. This residence was “typical of those new brick houses admired by travelers who came to Lexington expecting to encounter savage Indians, wild animals, and wooden shacks, but who left admiring the wealthiest, most sophisticated community west of the Alleghenies, excepting, of course, New Orleans,” as described in Jean Harvey Baker’s book Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography.
Named Mary Ann after her mother’s only sister, she was the fourth of seven children (three brothers and three sisters) in a Presbyterian family of English, Irish and Scottish ancestry. Both her maternal and paternal grandfathers, Robert Parker and Levi Todd, were among Lexington’s founders and earliest promoters to prospective newcomers.
Her father, Robert Smith Todd, was a successful, albeit slave-owning, merchant and lawyer who served as a Kentucky state senator and had been an officer in the War of 1812. When Mary Ann was 6, her mother, Eliza Ann Todd (née Parker) died during childbirth. The following year, her father remarried.
Mary Ann’s stepmother, Elizabeth Humphreys Todd, and sisters were willing to conform to the era’s expectations of Southern ladies. But Mary Ann herself was most certainly unwilling. Though she received training in the social graces that daughters of the wealthy were obliged to possess, she also obtained an extensive and varied education. Additionally, her enthusiasm for politics—at the time, an unusual pastime for females—manifested as early as age 9, when she expressed her disapproval of Andrew Jackson, who visited Lexington as a presidential candidate.
For a young political aficionado like Mary Ann, Lexington was a veritable playground. Baker’s book relates that the city, aside from being a frequent destination for presidential visits, was the setting of “incessant parades, speeches, pole raisings, and election eve celebrations that accompanied a new era of American party competition.”
The Todds sometimes received important political guests, such as Henry Clay, the longtime Lexington resident and three-time presidential candidate who, along with holding other prominent positions, represented Kentucky in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
For Mary Ann Todd, the city’s political dynamism was a sorely needed distraction from the ongoing tension of her troubled relationship with her stepmother. Though this tension resulted in much discomfort, she was able to find outlets for personal growth and individual expression through acting, dancing, literature and, of course, politics.
From 1826 to 1832—with a one-year break to visit family in Springfield, Illinois—Todd attended the Shelby Female Academy in Lexington. She studied once again at the same school from 1837 to 1839, by then, known as Dr. Ward’s Academy.
Between her two tenures there, she attended Madame Mentelle’s Boarding School, also in Lexington. Even though she lived nearby, Todd, longing to escape her stepmother, boarded at the school, which was run by a woman who had fled the revolution in France decades earlier. Thanks to Charlotte Victorie Leclere Mentelle, Todd became fluent in French and an avid reader of the works of French novelist and playwright Victor Hugo.
In 1832, the Todd family relocated from their residence at Short Street to a larger home on West Main Street. This 14-room residence, which still stands, is known as the Mary Todd Lincoln House and is open to the public. The Todds’ previous residence was purchased by the Lexington Catholic Diocese and was demolished in 1887.
Todd’s days in Lexington ended in 1839, when, at age 20, she moved to Springfield, Illinois to live with her sister, Elizabeth Todd Edwards. Making her mark as a debutante in Springfield society, Mary Ann enjoyed the attention of a number of suitors, including a lanky lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. They proceeded to get engaged, but Lincoln broke off the engagement. As he was not then financially successful, he feared that he was an unsuitable husband for a lady accustomed to material comfort. Despite these misgivings, Todd and Lincoln, with the urging of mutual friends, reconciled.
At 23, Todd married Lincoln, then 33, on Nov. 4, 1842 in Springfield, where they began to raise a family. Ever headstrong and unafraid to flout convention, Mrs. Lincoln remained politically engaged at a time when most considered such pursuits unsuitable for a wife. She became first lady when her husband took office as president on March 4, 1861.
Though her life was privileged in the material sense of the word, Mary Todd Lincoln endured more than her share of personal hardship. She was unpopular as first lady: Southerners considered her a turncoat, while Northerners viewed her Southern background (she had two half-brothers who died and an additional half-brother who was wounded while fighting for the Confederate Army) as highly suspect.
Aside from witnessing her husband’s assassination on that infamous 1865 night at Ford’s Theater, she had to contend with three of her four children, all sons, dying in youth. She had long had a tendency toward mood swings, but the series of traumas she suffered led to a deteriorated psychological state. In 1875, the only son who outlived her, Robert Todd Lincoln, launched court proceedings to have his mother committed to a mental asylum.
Such a commitment was so thoroughly against her wishes that she attempted suicide. She survived only because an alert pharmacist, suspecting her motives, had slipped her a placebo instead of complying with her request for the far more potent substances of camphor and laudanum.
After obtaining her release from a mental asylum in Batavia, Illinois, Mary Todd Lincoln relocated to Europe for a period of several years. She ultimately returned to live with her sister in Springfield, where she died on July 16, 1882, at 63. She was buried nearby in the Lincoln tomb at Springfield’s Oak Ridge Cemetery.
Illinois has Mary Todd Lincoln’s remains, but her roots will always belong to Lexington.