THE COURTSHIP OF ANN RUTLEDGE

THE COURTSHIP OF ANN RUTLEDGE

FRANK W. LAMBERTON

e-Book

Maverick Publishing

HOUSTON, TEXAS

THE COURTSHIP OF ANN RUTLEDGE

FRANK W. LAMBERTON

Other published works by the Author

ROMANCING TANDY

BETWEEN TWO FLAGS

THE INDIAN AFFAIR

THE COUNTRY BOY

THE QUIZ KID

A SONG IS BORN

The first public performance of

THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER

A COMPANY OF PLAYERS

A fictional account of life and times of

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

THEY CAME TO THE CITY

THE COURTSHIP OF ANN RUTLEDGE

FRANK W. LAMBERTON

Here beneath this stone

Lies all that is mortal of Ann Rutledge

Beloved in life by Abraham Lincoln

Roll on, O Republic

From the dust of my bosom.

Epitaph on the tombstone of Ann Rutledge.

THE COURTSHIP OF ANN RUTLEDGE

FRANK W. LAMBERTON

DEDICATION

To Beverly Crandell in appreciation

for her assistance in compiling this book.

CHAPTER ONE

Salem, Illinois, in the 1830s possessed about two hundred inhabitants. The cooper shop, blacksmith, general store, undertaking parlor, and tavern were arrayed among frame and brick and log houses scattered around the base of a wooded hill that overlooked the Sangamon River. My father owned the tavern that stood at the crossroads. One road led to Springfield City, the other, southwest to St. Louis.

I am Ann, the eldest of three children at nineteen. Blond of hair, blue of eye, I presented a more or less even disposition to a world that would not be my pleasure for very long.

I first laid eyes on Abraham Lincoln one day in late July when my younger brother, Phillip, came running.

“Ann, come quick. A flat boat’s stuck in the river, hung up on that underwater dam.”

I was engaged in picking mushrooms in the woods alongside several other women of the town. All five of us manifested a desire to see the unfortunate craft.

“I suppose the crew is trying to get it off,” I said to Phil as we hurried uptrail beneath trees that formed a canopy of shade overhead.

And so it was. Trapped close to shore, the flatboat teetered on its underwater obstruction. Two men on the boat were transferring barrels and boxes from the bow to mid ship while standing hip deep. Close to the bow a man was drilling a hole through the heavy planking to let the water drain out. While we watched, the drill broke through the bottom and the water poured out. Soon the bow lifted, the stern settled.

“Plug her up, Jim,” the driller called to one of the men aboard. While he caulked the hole tight and secure, the other two went to the stern and began to push. The caulker joined them. They pushed, heaved, and strained and little by little the heavy craft inched forward. A final push slid it into the river, floating free. We on the bankment cheered.

The three tied the craft to two big trees at the water’s edge.

“I’ll report this to the boss,” the drillman said. “You two had best stay here on watch.”

He stepped ashore and greeted me most genially, “Hello, pretty girl.” He would have walked on by.

I said, “Mr. Offut will want to hear about this.”

He stopped. “I’m fixin’ to tell him, Miss.” He looked back at the freed craft. “Whatever caught our boat shouldn’t be there.”

“It’s an underwater dam,” I explained. “Someone one time had the brilliant notion to make a mooring here. So they build a dam to hold back the water and deepen the channel near shore. But that didn’t work out so good. In high water the thing goes under the surface. All the rain lately made the water deeper so no one could see it, and that’s how your boat got caught.”

“That damn dam, I calls it,” Phil put in.

“This is my brother, Phillip. My name is Ann. Ann Rutledge. What’s your name, Mister?”

“Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln. And I’m pleased to make the acquaintance of you both.” He gave us a friendly smile.

I observed him more closely. He was around twenty, very tall, dark complexion, prominent facial bone structure. He’d look better with a beard, I thought. Hide those hollowed cheeks.

“Where are you going with your cargo, Mr. Lincoln?”

“New Orleans.” We walked together up the trail and into the woods. “We carry two tons of wheat for the southerners.”

“All that distance to sell wheat. Don’t the southerners grow their own?”

“Climate’s too warm down there to grow good wheat. I’ve a contract with Mr. Offut to work clerking in his store when I get back. That’ll be in about three months, maybe six weeks, all depending. Last trip I made it in six weeks, but we were lucky.

“My word, you are well traveled though,” I remarked. “I was to Springfield twice so far. That’s the extent of my travels. But you’ve been to New Orleans, and now you’re going again.”

“Vagabonage, Ann.” He cast me another smile. “A rolling stone gathers no moss, tis said. So you are one of the Rutledges. Your Pa must be James, one of the founders of this settlement.”

“Yes, that’s so. And I’m sure that you’ll gather some moss before you are much older,” I said affably. “How would you go about doing it?”

“Well, there’s politics for one. A good politician can jump from not much to governor if he plays his cards right.”

“You mean if he can persuade enough people to vote for him.”

“You’ve got that right, Ann. And here comes Mr. Offut.”

I looked up the road and saw the trader hurrying toward us. Mr. Lincoln said to me quickly, “I think when he reaches us, he’ll demand my full explanation as to how come we almost wrecked his boat and lost his cargo. He tends to yell a lot when he’s excited.”

“Maybe he’ll hand you a compliment for saving it.”

“Maybe so. Look here, Ann, I’ll stop by your tavern later today. I hope that you will be there so we can continue our discussion. I’m casting off early in the morning, but I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be at the tavern waiting on customers this afternoon. So do stop by.”

“Good enough.” He gave me a half salute. “From New Orleans I’ll bring you a pretty trinket.”

Mr. Offut swept down on us then, and as Abraham had said, grabbed his attention with questions and reproaches.

“Come on, Phil,” I said to my brother. “Let’s go finish picking those mushrooms.”

I had two gentlemen callers that afternoon. One was my new acquaintance, Abraham, the other was the most important man in my life at the time; John McNeil, whom I expected to marry if he ever got around to popping the question.

I was busy serving drinks to tavern patrons when this most elegantly dressed young man came into the common room. One could tell that he was as close to being an aristocrat as most anyone in the county. John had graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio where he had studied the profession of surveyor. Now, he was employed in that line of work by a road construction company. To cinch his high degree he was a member of a mercantile family in Chicago.

“Hello, Honey,” I said as he rested his elbows on the bar.

“I need to talk to you, Ann. Bring me a whiskey to a table, and join me.”

I did as bid, and when seated opposite him at a table in one corner of the drinking establishment, he told me his news.

“I’m taking a new job with the company I work for. That’s the Empire Highway Construction Association.”

“I know, you told me already,” I said.

He went on, “They’ve contracted with the state of Illinois to build a highly improved highway to St. Louis from Springfield. We’ll avoid the Mississippi swamplands and lay the road with a tar and gravel base. No more ruts and bogs like that sorry excuse for a road in use now. I’m to be in charge of the surveying crew. Doesn’t that sound great?”

“Wonderful,” I said. I waited to hear him say, ‘now we can be married.’

“I have three days to get ready. And Ann, Darling, I want us to be officially betrothed before I go.”

He brought forth from his vest pocket, a small, snap lid box which he opened to disclose a silver ring. He placed it on my finger, smiling all the while.

A pang shot through me, which did not show on my smiling countenance.

A betrothal sealed by a ring. We had been keeping company for five months, the entire village knew about us. Now our long time together was to be crowned with a silver ring signifying our betrothal. And more waiting.

“When do you suppose we’ll be married, John?”

“When the road is finished I’ll take you home to Chicago with me, to my family. We’ll be married there. That’ll be around Thanksgiving. I’ll have a trackline into St. Louis completed by then. We won’t follow the old road at all, you’ll see. It’s twisty and narrow and gets flooded too often from the river. My company is going to give the state a road they can be proud of, and I’ll help give it to them.”

“Good for you,” I said. “I wish I could be with you to support you in this grand endeavor.”

“I know, Ann. You can help me by being here, true and faithful to me while I accumulate a small fortune for our life together.”

“Where will you be based? Here in Salem?” I asked hopefully.

“No. The construction will start out from St. Louis and work east by north toward Springfield.”

At this point Mr. Lincoln entered the common room, looked around, then went to the bar, looking for me.

“John, someone just came in whom I must talk to. Excuse me for a moment.”

I walked over to the man at the bar. “Hello, Mr. Lincoln.”

“Hello, Ann,” he said rather shyly.

“Come over to my table. There is someone I want you to meet.”

I was feeling a brittle resentment toward John. A three or four month extension on our betrothal didn’t sit with me so good. I wanted to start my own home, get out from under my father’s authority, take on the responsibilities of an adult, and start to think about having children. We could be married as well as not, I thought rebelliously. Instead, he expects me to go on as a barmaid, faithful and true, under the auspices of a ring on my finger.

John looked at us questioningly when we reached his table.

“John, this is my friend Abraham Lincoln. He’s captain of a flatboat, taking cargo of wheat to New Orleans. Abraham, this is my intended, John McNeil.”

“How do you do, Mr. Lincoln,” John said somewhat dubiously. “Ann, I fail to see what this has to do with us.”

I rattled on, scarce caring what I said. “Here I am with two likely young men, both of whom are going far away, while I wait here alone and forlorn. But I have a ring to remember you by, don’t I, John? And Mr. Lincoln promises to bring me a fine gift from New Orleans. He promises to return, and so do you, John. Isn’t that what you promise? Now I want you two to have a drink of my father’s best, but I’m not going to serve it. Drink up. Get to know each other. You can do that well enough without me. So good afternoon to you both.” Whereupon I turned, and walked swiftly into the kitchen.

“Ann!” John’s angry yelp followed me. He caught up with me in the kitchen and grabbed my arm. The Negro cook turned an inquiring eye toward us.

“Ann! What are you for? Such a ridiculous display of sarcasm and bad temper. I really don’t understand you.”

“Oh, leave it. Go if you don’t understand. If you would rather be betrothed than married to me that’s all right. It’s your choice. Do as you like. Come back when you please. I suppose I’ll be waiting for you.”

Gently he explained why it was best that we put off our wedding until he had finished his job on the new road, a matter of earning a lot of money to do our marriage in style, a triumphant journey to his family in Chicago and my presentation to them. His reasons were all good, reasonable, and proper. He reminded me that long engagements were the custom. Although I could have disputed him there, but didn’t. I just let him run on until he had exhausted his justifications. Then he embraced me soothingly, assured me again that it was best we wait a little longer, although it was as hard for him to wait as it was for me.

“I’ve got to win your family’s approval, is that what you’re saying? What if they don’t approve of this tavern wench you plan to marry?” I asked.

“Oh, they’ll love you—just as I do.”

There was nothing I could say to that. He had made the decision and I must go along with it or call the whole thing off, which I wasn’t ready to do, for in truth I loved the young lord of all he surveyed.

We kissed and my resentment melted. We returned to the common room, but our table was vacant. Mr. Lincoln was gone. I felt a pang of remorse. I had used him to stick a needle of rebellion into my beloved. I hadn’t known him for more than the exchange of a few casual remarks, and perhaps that was just as well.

The new road to St. Louis would by-pass Salem. I suggested to John that he use his surveyor’s skills and tricks to bend the Road in our direction, and then point it west by south toward its destination. He dismissed this altogether.

“Salem,” he said, “is nothing now and it will never be anything more than a wide place in the scheme of settlement. It’s off the beaten path, and there’s too many hills, and it’s overshadowed by Springfield.”

“We’ve got a river,” I defended the town most stoutly, but he held a poor view of Salem as being something like Australia. Everyone knows where it is, but no one ever goes there.

Then the summons came from the road builder’s headquarters in St. Louis. He showed me the letter telling him to report there within the week. The next morning we said goodbye and he was gone in a two-wheeled conveyance called a buggy. I watched him go and I had a feeling that it was taking my lover further from me that I could ever go.

He had promised to write to me quite often, but no letter came from John until the end of summer. He related that the Road had reached a little settlement which some wit had named Buzzard’s Crossing. “It is no more than a tavern and general store combined, but not even the meanest of habitations should be called Buzzard’s Crossing,” said John. He refused to write it on his survey map. He decided to call it Plainview, and that’s how the settlement is known on state maps.

He told me this as a point of humor. I entertained a thought that he seemed to be more interested in his Road than interested in me. I quickly dismissed this notion, but it stuck in my head like a sore tooth.

I laid it on my married cousin, Mona Freeman. She said, “Yes, it could be so. But he probably loves you in his own fashion. He did give you a ring to hold you to him, even though it’s not a wedding ring.”

“That’s the only kind I want,” I said. “John and I were keeping company for five months before he went to work on the Road. Now he asks me to wait some more instead of taking me to St. Louis with him. While I wait I can’t have an escort among the young men to dances and parties because they all know that I’m betrothed and out of circulation. It’s very aggravating, Mona. I’m sitting here betwixt and between—neither married nor single. I don’t see a word of love or affection in this letter he finally penned to me. He’d write the same sort of letter to my brother Phil. Phil is planning to go to work on the Road.” I changed the dismal subject to something a little brighter. “He wants to join the men although he’s only fourteen, going on fifteen.”

At dinner one evening in September, my pa announced that Mr. Lincoln had, that day, returned from his travels and had taken up clerking at Denton Offut’s general store.

“I wager he’ll have some tall tales to tell,” my sister, Helen, remarked.

“Lincoln’s an amiable cuss,” Pa said. “Denton swears by him. Trusted him enough to send him way down south with a cargo of wheat, trusting him to sell it and bring the money back.”

My only interest in Mr. Lincoln was to hear him tell about New Orleans. Such an exotic city, just like Paris and London as a fascinating place, but perhaps not as respectable as those two foreign cities, for New Orleans was the fountainhead of the slave trade. To many in the northern states, that factor detracted from its charm and glamour.

“I wonder what Mr. Lincoln thinks about the slave trade?” I murmured. “Pass the pigeon pie, will you, Helen. I do believe I’ll have another piece.”

“You’ll get fat, eating pigeon pie.” Helen passed me the dish. “If he’s like most people here in Salem, he’s not in favor of it—slavery I mean.”

“We’ve got quite a few Negro contrabands in town who aren’t in favor of it either,” Mother remarked.

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