user: Chicago Live! Almanac: 1865
In 1906 a baby was born. His parents, both Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, were trying to make a living here and trying to think of a name for their new baby.

More than 80 years later that baby looked like this and he sat in his office and told me: "My mother, God rest her, discovered that in this country, high-class Jews went to temple. She heard that Abraham Lincoln was shot in the temple and saw pictures of him with a beard, so she decided to name me for this great Jewish hero."

And so was Abraham Lincoln Marovitz named and so did he go on to become great Chicago lawyer, a friend to the famous, and an esteemed federal judge who filled his office with all things Lincoln. He revered the man, his namesake.

Abraham Lincoln died in 1865, our almanac year. But he lives on in so many ways...some good but many bad and silly.

This is the trailer for a movie soon to open. "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."

Yes, good, bad, silly...and shameful, as in the ways the 16th president's image and name is currently being used by the Illinois Lottery to sell tickets.

There are prouder moments for him, such as this, the statue that stands outside the Chicago History Museum just a couple of blocks away. Inside the museum is Lincoln's death bed, with its lathed walnut frame. And lots of other Lincoln stuff, including a a note he wrote to Gen. Grant toward the end of the Civil War. It reads: "Gen. Sherman says 'If the thing is pressed I think that Lee will surrender.' Let the thing be pressed."

Lincoln's birthday was Monday. He would have been 203.

Lincoln–and what school kid doesn't know this and what person can't learn all there is to learn at the amazing Lincoln Museum and Library in Springfield?–was born on February 12th 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky in a small log cabin with just one room and...rail splitter, lawyer, congressman, Lincoln Douglas debates, Presidency, Emancipation Proclamation, Civil War, Gettysburg, Ford's Theater....Boom.

During his life, Lincoln came to Chicago often, to our courtrooms beginning in the 1840s. In 1860 here at the Wigwam where, helped in large part by his pal Joseph Medill, co-owner and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, he won the Republican nomination for the presidency.

Lincoln's ties to Chicago remained, even after his death.

Mary Todd Lincoln moved to a hotel in Hyde Park after the assassination. And it was here she went crazy, spending large sums of money on things she never used: draperies she never hung...elaborate dresses she never wore. She only wore black after her husband's assassination and would walk around the city with $56,000 in government bonds sewn into her petticoats. She spent some time later in Batavia. Bellevue Sanitarium was her home for an unpleasant year. The building still exists. It was later a home for unwed mothers, then a derelict mansion, then luxury condos.

After his father's death, Robert Todd Lincoln came here, where he completed his law studies...shy and reserved, he never ran for office but was secretary of war (1881-85) and minister to Great Britain (1889-93) and later came back here in to be, for more than two decades, president and later chairman of the Pullman Company, living large in a mansion at 1234 Lake Shore Drive.

There are no living descendants of Abraham Lincoln--the last, his great-grandson Robert Lincoln Beckwith, born in suburban Riverside in 1904, died in 1984--but Abraham Lincoln lives. His name is bestowed on so many businesses, public buildings, parks, neighborhoods, suburbs, streets, malls and stores...and money...that it is a commonplace on the landscape. So common that its use rarely brings the president himself to mind. Lincoln Liquor Store, Lincoln Auto Service, Lincoln Shoe Repair Store, Lincoln Paving Co., Lincoln Oaks Golf Club...All real places.

He lives in signs...and in song. Here's Steve Goodman singing Lincoln Park Pirates."

This is the Lincoln Restaurant, 4008 N. Lincoln Avenue. Inside there are more pictures of Lincoln on the walls and several busts. His face is on double-size glass mugs, T-shirts and sweat shirts. The menu has omelets named for Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson.

In life, Lincoln was a rough-and-tumble politician, with a statesman's vision and a poet's touch. A complex man.

Now in places he has become...What?

But hear this: On April 14, 1865, after Lee's surrender, Lincoln addressed 3,000 people and a brass band at the White House. He said, "Now Let the Band Play Dixie. It belongs nether to the South, nor to the North but to us all."

Good man, that Abraham Lincoln...good man.
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In 1906 a baby was born. His parents, both Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, were trying to make a living here and trying to think of a name for their new baby.