Talk:Mary Todd Lincoln/Archive 1

Necessary??
Idols of Mud, your comment had nothing to do with Mary Todd Lincoln, so let's keep it seperate, thanks. --Cher &lt;3 (talk) 00:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Just kidding
I'm sorry...I misunderstood your edit. Excuse my rudeness. =( --Cher &lt;3 (talk) 00:33, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Mary Todd William L Todd Cousin or Nephew
I am reasonable certain, the creator of the California Bear Flag, William L Todd was Mary Todd's Cousin. Not Nephew. This is in direct contrast to many published web sources stating colloquially he was her nephew. According to the genealogy site, cited by the Mary Todd Research Project, which has the dubious distinction of being a Members.aol.com page, their common ancestor was Levi Todd (generation 5. One of his sons was Dr. John Todd, who in turn had a son named William L. Born 1818.  The other of Levi's sons in question was Robert Smith Todd, who in turn had a daughter named Mary born 1818. This suggests first cousins.

It takes serious attention to discern this from the site, as it is most concerned with Mary's genealogy, hence lateral branching is minimized. genealogy research site --K3vin (talk) 02:11, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The family tree is further muddles by William Todd the revolutionary war era ancestor. Quick reading can confuse the Bills.  The family tree site follows the Todd line, but it is very cumbersome atthe generational switches.  To aid in clarification, I have adjusted all Flag William as William L todd.  --K3vin (talk) 21:54, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Name Query
I couldn't help wondering whether the lady in question was actually known as 'Mary Todd Lincoln' in her lifetime, or rather just 'Mrs Lincoln / Mrs Mary Lincoln / Mary', depending on how well you knew her? That is, is 'Mary Todd Lincoln' a usage which is in fact ahistorical but politically correct? Lonstan (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:45, 14 April 2009 (UTC). She was indeed known as "Mary Lincoln", and never used the name "Mary Todd Lincoln". I have listed her name at the top of the article as "Mary Ann (nee Todd) Lincoln". Although it would be historically accurate to remove all references to "Mary Todd Linclon" in this article, it would most likely be confusing to many readers who know her by this name. If anyone has any suggestions about this, it would be appreciated.Mk5384 (talk) 00:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Yikes.
Someone better check this page out stat. It currently reads, "Mary Ann Todd Lincoln (December 13, 1818–July 16, 1882)had a nine inch cock and was a notorious whore and the wife of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and was First Lady of the United States from 1861 to 1865."
 * (The previous unsigned comment was on 2009-05-19T08:39:50 by 130.39.63.161.) The vandalism referred to was already in the process of being taken care of, and it all took a matter of minutes. See e.g. --NealMcB (talk) 20:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Lincoln-Douglas
The introduction reads, "Mary was courted by Stephen Douglas before she married Abraham Lincoln. Later they debated in their campaigns for the presidency." Lincoln and Douglas certainly debated many times, both before and during their 1958 US Senate campaigns, but did they ever debate as presidential candidates?Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 04:07, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Lincoln and Douglas did not debate in 1860. Lincoln did not campaign at all after winning the nomination, while Douglas stumped the South to rally Union support. Rjensen (talk) 04:56, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I changed this phrase to, "Before she married Lincoln, Mary was courted by his long-time political opponent Stephen Douglas." The body of the article doesn't mention that Lincoln and Douglas were presidential opponents, and the material about the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates is unsourced (and perhaps irrelevant to Mary Lincoln?). Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 07:02, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Mary and her family were friends with Whig Party founder Henry Clay
I added... Mary and her family were friends with Whig Party founder Henry Clay<ref]citation needed</ref]. Abraham Lincoln when he met Mary Todd was a Whig and great admirer of Henry Clay. That Abraham and Mary had Clay's politics in common was one of the reasons of their mutual attraction and respect. - The Messenger 50.153.104.253 (talk) 14:52, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * For something like this, please find a reference to support it before adding it. Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 15:33, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

William Todd as her cousin
This section might be true, however it cites the personal work of an amateur genealogist as it's source. This is not an acceptable reliable source. "Another cousin, William L. Todd, created the original Bear Flag for the California Republic in 1846." Wjhonson (talk)

Sources for ancestry
The source for Mary Todd Lincoln's more remote ancestry is this- but it doesn't cite its own sources and is hardly a reliable secondary source. Unless anyone knows of a better source for her ancestry I suggest deleting the paragraph as unverifiable.asnac (talk) 18:02, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * In case it helps, I found this alternative source for Todd genealogy. It appears to include sources. —ADavidB 16:35, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

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Untitled
Is Dolley Madison, née Todd, any relation to Mary Lincoln, née Todd? --Angr (t·c) 08:01, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Dolley Madison is "née Payne", not "née Todd". James Madison was her 2nd husband. John Todd (& their 2nd son,William) died in a 1793 outbreak of yellow fever. The Todds' surviving son was (John) Payne Todd. Have no idea if these Todds are related to Mary Todd Lincoln. John Todd was a Philadelphia lawyer, while Mary Todd was brought up in Lexington, KY. ScarletRibbons (talk) 04:09, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Sarah Bernhardt
I've seen the Sarah Bernhardt story in several places, but until I see a citation beyond Bernhardt's unreliable recollections, I would advise keeping it out of this article. It's nice to think of an actress saving a widow whose husband was murdered by an actor, but historians I've read have tended to be skeptical of it.--Idols of Mud (talk) 17:30, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

________________ At one point the article says she gets $3000 a year then a few paragraphs later $3000 a month. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.204.227.224 (talk) 23:11, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

There is one aspect of the story about Mary Lincoln told by Sarah Bernhardt that may be of interest, which is the date. This article says that Mary Lincoln traveled to New York in 1881, but doesn't say when she returned to the United States from Europe. The Bernhardt story is specifically dated October 1880. The 1881 date has no citation for support. Although the story of the accident on deck may be imagined or embroidered, the date of October 1880 for the voyage is solid. There are extant accounts from the time of Bernhardt's first American tour, the dates of which are not in doubt.

Poihths (talk) 15:05, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Comment
Posted to Talk:Mary Todd Lincoln/Comments by Special:Contributions/69.228.138.30, moved by CosmicPenguin (Talk) 19:41, 16 February 2009 (UTC) I'm a psychiatrist and I have a comment regarding the citation on Mary Todd's mental health. While I am not a scholar of her life, what I do know tells me that Mary Todd almost certainly did not have schizophrenia. Dr Moses, being an internist and not a psychiatrist, is apparently eminently not qualified to diagnose mental illness. Including his website in your references gives his erroneous diagnosis a credence it does not deserve and distorts our understanding of both Mary Todd and schizophrenia.

Shilla Nassi, PhD, MD LAC-USC Kech School of Medicine

Having had an uncle who was schizophrenic I can say with 100% certitude that Mary Lincoln was not. Had she been so she would not have been able to interact in any logical manner with the people around her and would have been "put away" years before she even met Lincoln. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.119.151.233 (talk) 08:18, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

From a historical point of view, it is quite problematic to put forward the idea that any physician of the time, regardless of qualifications, could have diagnosed Mary Todd Lincoln as schizophrenic during her life when schizophrenia was not understood in anything close to modern terms until quite some time after her death (by Kraepelin in 1899 and Bleuler in 1911). It would be much more appropriate to consider the ideas about her mental state put forward and acted upon at the time in terms of the conceptions of mental illness and health actually in use at the time. (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2927892/ and https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emil-Kraepelin.) Poihths (talk) 15:21, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Mary Todd Lincoln
Mrs. Lincoln never once used the name "Mary Todd Lincoln" in her entire married life. It is understandable that she is referred to in that manner here, as even biographers of Lincoln refer to her as such. Still, she did not use that name. (See, for example, Lincoln's Melancholy, by Joshua Wolf Shenk.) I'm not going to change anything myself, but it would be more appropriate to refer to her as "Mary(nee Todd)Lincoln. Does anyone agree with this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.82.204.61 (talk) 21:47, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Since we have the wiki technology of redirects, it is not terribly important as long as "Mary Todd Lincoln", "Mary Todd" & "Mary Lincoln" all redirect to same article.  I am not willing to get into a debate over which name is correct.  It all comes down to whichever faction has the most energy to change it back to where the other factions give up.  I live in Mary's home town, we have a museum in her girlhood home, which is known as the Mary Todd Lincoln house.  An additional marker outside the home, says "Todd House".  But I am still neutral as far as the main title of the page. K3vin (talk) 04:05, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * And in the article, we have a picture of the crypt of "Mary Todd Lincoln". But the statement is true. Mary Lincoln never referred to herself as anything other than "Mary Todd", or "Mary Lincoln". Also, "Mary Lincoln" redirects to a disambiguation page. It does not redirect here.Mk5384 (talk) 16:48, 26 June 2010 (UTC)


 * That's because she wasn't the only notable Mary Lincoln. Regardless of the fact she never called herself Mary Todd Lincoln, for better or worse she is generally nowadays known as that and has been known as that for a very long time, and that's what governs our article title.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  09:27, 25 August 2011 (UTC)


 * What other Mary Lincoln do you have in mind? I'm five pages deep into a Google search on "Mary Lincoln" (in quotes for specificity) and I'm not coming up with anybody other than the former First Lady except one lonely reference to an actress. I think the point made here is very well taken; I see no other notable figure likely to be confused with the subject of this article.

Poihths (talk) 15:26, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Assessment of mental state
It has been customary for historians and psychologists to apply current knowledge to evaluating historical figures. The material for suggestions that Mary Todd Lincoln had biplar disorder is RS; such endeaveors are typical of historic assessments. Contemporary accounts of her document her distress; it is not defamatory to suggest why her symptoms cause specialists to conclude she had bipolar disorder - conditioned on acknowledging they do not know for sure. Parkwells (talk) 04:38, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

While is is true that modern writers practicing popular history enjoy applying today's ideas to the past, it is basically useless to discuss the mental state of a person of another time in terms of the concepts of mental condition used in our own day. Doing so cannot enhance our understanding of the events as they took place. No one, at the time, responded to or acted with respect to Mary Lincoln using our modern concepts of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or any other modern concept of mental illness. The decisions made about her and their effects on her and on her life should be seen in terms of mental health and illness as they were understood at the time, because it is that understanding, not modern conceptions, that shaped those decisions and the effect that they had. Poihths (talk) 15:33, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

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