Manuscript legal document. [McLean County, Illinois?], ca 1848. 10 pages. 

As anyone faced with taking notes in an interminably long hearing about lumber can attest, sometimes the page beckons to be doodled upon. This is what happened to a clerk or lawyer who used the blank final page of a legal brief to occupy his pen. Filled with doodles ranging from the names of prominent figures to legal terms to the names of card games, the page also bears something more significant: twice the doodler wrote "Abraham Lincoln," once underlining it with decorative squiggles. 

The document is made up of informal notes taken by a clerk or legal apprentice. Almost certainly the scribe was familiar with Lincoln from his legal career and nascent political aspirations.

A charming Lincoln relic. 

[Abraham Lincoln, Politics, Mary Todd Lincoln, 1860 Election, Election of 1860, 1864 Election, Election of 1864, Lincoln Assassination, John Wilkes Booth] [Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera, Signatures, Autographs]