Down the Rabbit Hole: Discovering Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 Time Capsule

Publisher and editor Ross E. Heller is a member of the Lincoln Group who made an extraordinary Lincoln artifact discovery. Ross fell into what turned out to be his personal ‘rabbit hole’ in June 2021. That’s when he bought a hundred-year-old book; an obscure 1924 volume entitled: “In the Footsteps of the Lincolns.” This book was written by turn-of-the-last-century author and Lincoln devotee Ida Minerva Tarbell. In reading her book, Heller learned about the 1858 ‘scrapbook’ and Capt. James N. Brown and his sons and the 1901 Facsimile. Ida Tarbell described the scrapbook’s Facsimile even in 1924 as both "rare and scarce." That key phrase resonated. That in 1924 – 100 years ago – this 1901 book – then twenty years old – was already both rare and scarce!

Ross took this as a clarion call to him as a collector of the obscure! He found a copy which showed…