Digitized Content from the Frederick Hill Meserve Selected Photographs | Illinois History and Lincoln Collections

The digitized content of the Frederick Hill Meserve Selected Photographs consists of photographs of Abraham Lincoln, dating from 1846 to 1865, that were collected by Frederick Hill Meserve. The photographs were collected in an album that was prepared by Meserve and Carl Sandburg for the creation of The Photographs of Abraham Lincoln, published in 1944.

Frederick Hill Meserve was born in 1865 and was the son of William Neal Meserve, a Civil War veteran. Frederick Meserve began collecting Civil War era photographs in the 1890s to illustrate his father's war diary. He became a prominent collector and historian of photographs from the era, especially photographs of Abraham Lincoln. He worked alongside historian Carl Sandburg to publish The Photographs of Abraham Lincoln in 1944. Meserve died in 1962, and his extensive collection of original photographs, amassed with the help of his daughter, Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt, was purchased by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in 2015.

The digitized content consists of over 100 photographs of Abraham Lincoln, dating from 1846 to shortly before Lincoln's death in 1865. The photographs are 20th century reproductions made from original daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and negatives, which were collected in an album to prepare for the creation of The Photographs of Abraham Lincoln. The bulk of the photographs depict Lincoln during the years of his presidential campaign and the subsequent five years he spent in the White House.

The Frederick Hill Meserve Selected Photographs were partially digitized in 2013. Items are available online at the University of Illinois Digital Library. A preservation copy of the items is available to IHLC and digital preservation staff at the Library Digital Repository: https://medusa.library.illinois.edu/collections/232.