Wednesday, February 11, 1998
What ever happened to the folklore there was a Big Island man on hand for President Lincoln's second inaugural address, "With malice toward none" -- any truth in that? Isle man attended
Lincoln inauguralYes. Lyman Putnam Lincoln, who moved to Hawaii in 1890, a distant relative of Abraham Lincoln, said Jan. 20, 1949, after listening to President Truman's inaugural on radio: "This was the second time I have heard a president take the oath of office.
"The first was in Washington, D.C., in 1865, when I heard, as a child, President Lincoln take the oath of office. But it has taken 82 years to hear the second, probably the last?" It was his last. The retired Hookena, Hawaii, postmaster died less than six months before he would have been 90, Jan. 13, 1953, a week before President Eisenhower's inaugural.
L.P. Lincoln was born in Massachusetts on July 6, 1863.
He was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln Jr., eldest son of the original Samuel Lincoln, who came from England in 1636. President Lincoln was a descendant of the third son, Mordecai.
When he was almost 20 months old, he went to the nation's capital with his father and uncle and saw his distinguished relative go down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol for his second inaugural on March 4, 1865.
"Of course, I was little more than an infant," he later said.
"But the crowds and the fanfare made such a deep impression on my memory that I can still see the president."
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