INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – A collection of Abraham Lincoln memorabilia valued at more than $20 million has been donated to the state of Indiana and will be housed in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, Gov. Mitch Daniels said Friday.
The collection including photographs, signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and thousands of other documents is considered the world’s largest private collection of memorabilia from Abraham Lincoln’s personal and presidential life.
The items formerly housed at the defunct Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Ind go to the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis and the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne. They are being donated by the Lincoln Financial Foundation, which relocated from Fort Wayne to Philadelphia in 1999.
“We enter Lincoln’s bicentennial year with the goal of re-establishing Indiana’s central place in his life,” Daniels said in a statement. “Indiana pledges the most exquisite care and the widest possible public availability of these priceless pieces of our history.”
The collection’s more than 20,000 items also includes signed copies of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, artifacts including Lincoln’s wallet and a chair he sat in for some of his most famous photographs, artwork prints and rare books.
“Lincoln is a beloved figure who has inspired generations of Americans. He spent his formative years in Indiana and we are grateful to keep the collection here in the state,” said Barry Dressel, Indiana State Museum president and CEO.
Lincoln, who was born in Kentucky, spent his childhood in southwestern Indiana before beginning his legal and political career in Illinois.
The Lincoln Financial Foundation this year reviewed proposals from organizations across the country that were interested in the collection. An Indiana team included representatives from the state museum, the library, the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana State Library and a group known as Friends of the Lincoln Museum.
An endowment funded by private donations will pay for expenses at the state museum and library to maintain the collection and display it, the museum said.
Items from the collection will be displayed as part of a Library of Congress exhibition of rare Lincoln artifacts that will debut at the state museum in 2010 in connection with events celebrating the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.
Other contenders for the collection included the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., and a Washington, D.C., group made up in part by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and the Library of Congress.
The Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne closed in June.
Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-CS-12-12-08 1730EST
