commonly supposed that the original marriage license issued to
Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd in 1842, with the officiating-minister's
certificate of marriage attached to it, was one of the interesting
documents in what was formerly the Keys Lincoln Memorial Collection.
Nicolay and Hay reproduced it in their biography of Lincoln, and other
publications have made it appear authentic. Messrs. Keys and
Munson, who formed the collection in which the certificate was first
exhibited, called it a duplicate, and Mr. William H. Lambert of
Philadelphia, who owns it now, supposed, in buying it, that it was a
duplicate. Mr. Lambert, however, in showing us the certificate, called
attention to a suspicious circumstance connected with the license.
The seal of the county court stamped upon it was dated "1849." It was
difficult to reconcile this with the fact that the marriage occurred
in 1842. The inconsistency was covered up in certain facsimiles which
have been published, by a stroke of the pen; the date of the seal was
changed to fit the date of the marriage. Mr. Lambert's suggestion led
to an investigation for this Magazine. A search in the county clerk's
office at Springfield brought to light the real and only "original"
license, stowed away in a dusty pigeon-hole, untouched in thirty
years. This is the license which is reproduced above. Beneath the
license is the Rev. Charles Dresser's certificate of the marriage.
The bogus document was made out on the blank form in use in the county
clerk's office in 1865--a form quite different from that used in 1842.
This form was not used prior to 1865, and never after February 3,
1866. So it seems most probable that the spurious license was procured
soon after Mr. Lincoln's assassination. The handwriting is that of
N.W. Matheny, then, as in 1842, the county clerk, a gentleman of high
character, who no doubt furnished the copy for a perfectly proper
purpose. It will be observed that the genuine license bears no seal.
This is due to the fact that prior to 1849 the county court did not
have a seal; indeed, before that year, such a tribunal as the
"county court" was unknown to the judiciary system of the State. The
certificate attached to the counterfeit license, of course, was not
written by the Rev. Charles Dresser (for he was then dead), but,
like the license itself, was made out by the county clerk.--_J. McCan
Davis._]

Another prominent member in the same circle with Mr. Lincoln and Miss