The Indiana State Museum has unveiled a previously unknown artifact from Abraham Lincoln’s life in Indiana. Lincoln’s bench mallet (circa 1829) will be on public display for the first time in 188 years, on his birthday, February 12 and remain on view through 2016 at the museum.
“The mallet is an extremely rare and important find that connects Abraham Lincoln to his Hoosier roots and to the rail-splitter legend that every schoolchild in America has been taught for 150 years,” said Dale Ogden, chief curator of history & culture and the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection at the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites.
The mallet descended through the family of Barnabas Carter of Spencer County, Ind. The Carters were among the earliest settlers to pioneer the rocky hills of southern Indiana. Lincoln’s bench mallet has passed to Barnabas Carter’s great-great-great-great grandchildren Keith Carter of Evansville, Ind., and his sister Andrea Solis of Saline, Mich., where it has been a quietly treasured heirloom for five generations.
“This artifact was originally a splitting maul used by Lincoln to drive iron wedges into logs creating split-rails for fencing. The maul head, made from a tree root-ball, eventually split in half,” said Steve Haaff, the foremost expert on furniture the Lincolns made while living in Indiana. “Rather than discard the tool, Lincoln repurposed it into a bench mallet he used to drive pegs into furniture and other fixtures. Lincoln discarded the original long handle and relocated a shorter grip into the remaining portion of the maul to create a mallet.”
Lincoln lived in southern Indiana for his formative years from 1816 to 1830.
