Alva Review-Courier -

Historians have consistently noted that President Abraham Lincoln came from what we would today call an “underprivileged” background. That is to say, his family was poor.

The same, however, cannot be said of his wife, Mary. First Lady Mary Lincoln was born Mary Todd in 1818 into a wealthy slaveholding Kentucky family.

Her parents, Robert and Eliza (Parker) Todd, had seven children. Eliza died in 1825, and the following year Robert remarried. He and his second wife, Elizabeth (Humphreys) Todd, had nine more children together.

Mary and her siblings were raised in a 14-room mansion in Lexington,...