William Wallace Lincoln place of birth Springfield
Life
Willie Lincoln was born in Springfield, Illinois, on December 21, 1850. He was born just ten months after the death of his older brother Eddie, who died of tuberculosis earlier that year just shy of his fourth birthday.
Along with his younger brother Tad, Willie was one of the most recognizable members of Lincoln's family. William Herndon, Abraham Lincoln's law partner, wrote about the times Lincoln would bring the boys to work with him: "The boys were absolutely unrestrained in their amusement.  If they pulled down all the books from the shelves, bent the points of all the pens, overturned inkstands, scattered law papers over the floor or threw the pencils into the spittoon, it never disturbed the serenity of their father’s good nature."Despite his propensity for mischief, Willie also had a philosophical and thoughtful side, and it was said he was very like his father in this way. Like his father, Willie enjoyed writing and working with words. When his father's friend Edward Baker was killed in action at the Battle of Ball's Bluff in 1861, ten-year-old Willie wrote a eulogy for him that was published in the National Republican. Another time, when his father took him to Chicago in 1859 on a business trip, a wide-eyed Willie wrote home to a friend: "This town is a very beautiful place. Me and father went to two theatres the other night. Me and father have a nice little room to ourselves. We have two little pitchers on a washstand. The smallest one for me the largest one for father. We have two little towels on a top of both pitchers. The smallest one for me, the largest one for father."When Lincoln took office as President of the United States, Willie and Tad moved into the White House with the rest of their family. To prevent them from becoming too lonely in their new home, Mary asked the wife of Horatio Nelson Taft, a federal judge, to allow her boys, 14-year-old "Bud" (Horatio Nelson Taft Jr., 1847–1915) and 12-year-old "Holly" (Halsey Cook Taft, 1849–1897), to play with the Lincoln boys at the White House. The boys brought their 16-year-old older sister Julia Taft to supervise their play. In her later memoir, Julia remembered Willie as being “the most lovable boy I ever knew, bright, sensible, sweet-tempered and gentle-mannered.”
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