Wilson, Douglas L., ed.; Davis, Rodney O., ed.; Sawyer, Elizabeth. 'Elizabeth Sawyer to Jesse W. Weik' in 'Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements About Abraham Lincoln' . Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. [format: book], [genre: letter]. Permission: University of Illinois Press
Persistent link to this document: http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/file.php?file=herndon712.html

CHICAGO, Oct. 12th, 1888.

Dear Sir:

My father was born in Keene, N.H., in 1790, entered Williams College, 1807, and removed to Chicago in 1835. After the re-accession of the Whigs to power he was on the 21st of June in 1849 appointed Commissioner of the Land Office by President Taylor. A competitor for the position at that time was Abraham Lincoln, who was beaten, it was said, by "the superior dispatch of Butterfield in reaching Washington by the Northern route," but more correctly by the paramount influence of his friend Daniel Webster.

He held the position of Land Commissioner until disabled by paralysis in 1852. After lingering for three years in a disabled and enfeebled condition. he died at his home in Chicago, October 23d, 1855, in his sixty-third year.

Very respectfully,
ELIZABETH SAWYER.

Herndon & Weik (1889), 301n

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