Baber, Adin. Papers, 1946-1967

This collection contains a typed manuscript providing a narration of the 1864 Charleston Riot, a typed copy of a talk on Abraham Lincoln’s career as a surveyor, and a handwritten letter sent from distant Lincoln relative Adin Baber to Lincoln scholar and collector Henrietta Calhoun Horner in 1946.

Adin Baber (1892-1974), born in Edgar County, Illinois, was the great-grandson of William Hanks, a first cousin of Abraham Lincoln. Baber studied civil engineering at Syracuse University and served as an ambulance driver in France with the American Field Service during World War I. He wrote several books on Abraham Lincoln and the Hanks family, including Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks.

Dr. Henrietta Calhoun Horner (1880-1964), of Clarinda, Iowa, received a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts at the University of Illinois. She graduated with a Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Michigan in 1917, and later served as a professor of bacteriology at the University of Iowa. Henrietta Horner and her husband, Harlan Horner, were Lincoln scholars and donated an extensive collection of Lincoln-related material to the University of Illinois Library in 1951. Their collection created the Lincoln Room, whose holdings are now part of the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections.

Adin Baber and Henrietta Horner were both researchers interested in the ancestry of Abraham Lincoln. Baber relied heavily on hand-drawn maps of the Hanks family settlement in Northern Virginia produced by Horner, and thanked her in his book, Nancy Hanks, of Undistinguished Families (1960).

The collection contains a letter written from Adin Baber to Henrietta Calhoun Horner dated September 15, 1946. Also included in the collection is a typescript of Baber's manuscript, "The Charleston Affair," which contains handwritten notes in the margins and an inscription with Baber's signature. This manuscript centers on a deadly soldier-civilian conflict that occurred in Charleston, Illinois between Union soldiers and anti-war Democrats on March 28, 1864. Baber first wrote the manuscript on August 11, 1936, but this transcript was recopied from the original in August 1946. In the letter to Henrietta Calhoun Horner, Baber discussed the various Hanks family members mentioned in his manuscript, as well as alternate names of individual family members. The collection also contains a typed copy of a talk Baber presented before the Illinois Registered Land Surveyor’s Association on February 11, 1967. This untitled talk discusses Abraham Lincoln and his history as a surveyor prior to his ambitions for political office. A longer, published version of this talk can be found within IHLC’s cataloged collections: A. Lincoln with compass and chain; surveying career as seen in his notes and maps and with an account of the Hanks family cousins, makers of fine surveying and mathematical instruments (973.7 L63C3B116a).

The Library acquired the letter and handwritten manuscript in 1952 as part of Harlan and Henrietta Horner's original donation. The provenance of the typed copy of Baber’s talk before the Illinois Registered Land Surveyors Association is unknown.