SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation owes more than $9 million for a collection of artifacts related to Abraham Lincoln and says it might have to sell some of it to erase the debt.
An Associated Press review of the collection shows a bevy of items only tangentially related to the 16th president.
They include theater playbills from the father of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth; an 1874 invitation to the wedding of the daughter of President Ulysses Grant; a 1928 memo to the wife of the law partner of Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln.
New Jersey-based appraiser Brian Kathenes (kuh-THEH’-niss) says such items wouldn’t command the price that Lincoln’s presidential seal or documents in Lincoln’s hand would.
The museum foundation wants Illinois to provide funds to keep the collection intact.