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Archiver > MO-CEMETERIES > 2004-10 > 1096870176


From: Orlena <>
Subject: Re: [MO-CEM] Any ideas on family cemetery
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 2004 23:09:43 -0700 (PDT)
In-Reply-To: <ea.59f65a01.2e920fa4@aol.com>


Here's more if anyone is interested.

http://www.westonmo.com/history/legends.shtml

MARY OWENS VINEYARD
In 1836 Abraham Lincoln arduously courted Mary Owens. Known as "Lincoln's other Mary," this fastidious little lady did not like the uncouth way of the future President of the United States. She also displayed an independent nature and refused his marriage proposal. Her family came west from Kentucky and settled in Platte County. Her future husband, Jesse Owens, along with two brothers came to Platte County soon after the Purchase. Two of them married Owens sisters. Jesse Vineyard and Mary Owens had two sons and a daughter. After Jesse Vineyards was killed in the Civil War, Mary continued to live in Weston on Walnut Street until her death in 1877. Her daughter, who inherited three letters written by Lincoln to her mother, said that her mother never considered it much of an honor to have been courted by the future President. Asked later in life if she regretted turning down Lincoln's proposal and not being First Lady she replied that she thought good manners superceded wealth,!
power
and influence. Mary Owens Vineyards is buried in Pleasant Ridge Cemetery just north of Weston on P Highway.

For another perspective of this story go online and type in Mary Owens. There was a fascinating story written in the KC Star at the time of the dedication of a new headstone donated by the Block family of Kansas City.

http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/local.pat,local/3773b27b.718,.html

Woman who rejected Lincoln gets new grave marker
By BRIAN BURNES - The Kansas City Star
Date: 07/18/99 22:15

To Mary Owens Vineyard, Abraham Lincoln represented the road not taken.

In 1837, the future president proposed to her.
She declined.
Instead of Washington and the White House, she eventually chose the Platte County community of Weston and a small brick cottage near Walnut and Main streets.
In later years, she insisted she never regretted her choice. Lincoln, meanwhile, in a letter to a friend, expressed barely disguised relief that the entire episode had blown over. He also proved not at all gallant, describing the overweight woman as "a fair match for Falstaff."
Her story endures among Lincoln enthusiasts, who call her "Lincoln's other Mary," referring to Mary Todd of Springfield, Ill., whom Lincoln eventually married.
On Sunday, admirers of Vineyard gathered in a cemetery near Weston and dedicated a new marker on her grave.
The granite stone is courtesy of Robert Bloch, president of the Henry W. and Marion H. Bloch Foundation.
"If this was Millard Fillmore's girlfriend, it'd be no big deal," Bloch said. "But Lincoln is on a pedestal."
Bloch learned of Vineyard this winter. Visiting her grave site, Bloch discovered an almost unreadable tombstone. Soon he had paid $1,097 to have a new monument installed.
If he previously hadn't known of the Weston connection to Lincoln, Bloch was like some newer Weston residents, said Etta Marie Brill, curator of the Weston Historical Museum.
"We're a bedroom community now, and 75 percent of the people in Weston are younger than myself and do not know about Mary Owens," said Brill, a Weston resident since 1944.
The Lincoln-Owens courtship story turns on Lincoln's idea of integrity and Owens' opinion of a proper man's proprieties.
In 1836, Lincoln was living in New Salem, Ill. Among his friends was Elizabeth Owens Abell, who apparently won a promise from Lincoln to marry her sister, Mary, if she, Elizabeth, would bring Mary up from Kentucky.
Lincoln, who had seen Mary Owens three years before, either was responding to a dare or, as some have speculated, was still reeling from the 1835 death of Ann Rutledge. Rutledge, according to legend, was Lincoln's first love.
Mary Owens was considered educated and refined. Lincoln was her intellectual equal, but was thought ungainly and awkward around women.
Unlike Owens, Lincoln was poor.
Still, Owens soon reappeared in New Salem.
One problem. She had gained weight. In a letter to Eliza Browning, wife of an Illinois legislator, Lincoln compared Owens to the rotund Shakespearean character Falstaff and also mentioned her "want of teeth."
Still, in 1837, Lincoln wrote to Owens, proposing marriage. Lincoln felt bound to honor his promise.
"I had told her sister that I would take her for better or for worse," he wrote to Browning, "and I made a point of honor and conscience in all things, to stick to my word."
Yet Owens declined, explaining later that Lincoln especially had disappointed her in two instances.
In one, while Owens and Lincoln were walking, Lincoln never offered to carry the large child another woman was struggling with. In the second, Lincoln and Owens were riding with a group when they came to a creek. While the other men were careful to see their companions safely across, Lincoln splashed through without a look back.
"Mr. Lincoln," Owens later said, "was deficient in those little links which make up the great chain of women's happiness."
Lincoln, if relieved by the rejection, still was stung by it. "My vanity was deeply wounded," he wrote to Browning.
Owens married Jesse Vineyard of Kentucky in 1841 and came to Weston.
There Jesse Vineyard and two brothers founded Pleasant Ridge College.
Lincoln, in 1859 a rising star in the Republican Party, that year visited Atchison and Leavenworth in the Kansas Territory, drawing large crowds. Only the Missouri River stood between him and the Vineyards' home in Weston, but it's not clear Lincoln knew she was there, said Brill of the Weston Historical Museum.
Jesse Vineyard died in the Civil War. He and Mary Owens Vineyard had five children, two of whom lived to adulthood. Mary Owens Vineyard died July 4, 1877.
It's hard to say just what Lincoln learned from his encounter with Mary Owens, said Rodney O. Davis, co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill.
"What this demonstrates was that Lincoln was no smooth operator when it came to women," Davis said. "And given his contacts initially and later with Mary Todd in Springfield, I don't think he learned a thing. By all accounts he was comparatively gauche."
The letter to Browning, in which Lincoln stated his seeming resolve to go through with the marriage, does suggest that Lincoln valued honor, Davis said.
"But Lincoln also flagrantly violated the honor code...by saying the things that he did, such that she was a `fair match for Falstaff,' " Davis said.
"Either in the 19th century or the 20th century, gentlemen just don't say that about women."

To reach Brian Burnes, history reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-7804 or send e-mail to



Directions to grave marker
Mary Owens Vineyard's new grave marker was dedicated Sunday in Pleasant Ridge Cemetery, outside Weston.
From the Weston Historical Museum at 601 Main St., go one block north to Walnut Street and turn right. Head one block east and turn left onto Welt Street. Then go north on Welt, following the road north and northeast until it intersects with Missouri 45. Go straight across Missouri 45 onto Route P. Follow Route P east and north for about five miles. Pleasant Ridge Cemetery will be on the left.
---------------------------------

All content 2004 The Kansas City Star

http://jala.press.uiuc.edu/11/simon.html

Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge

6 Her statement, if believable, proves only that Lincoln had never dared tell his wife about his unquestionable courtship of Mary Owens.

Orlena




wrote:
Hi Folks,

I am an associate of Wayne's and I recently ran across and interesting
tombstone in the Pleasant Ridge Cemetery in Platte County, Mo. And since we are talking about Abraham Lincoln this should be noted, it reads,

Abraham Lincoln's Other Mary
Mary Owens Vineyard
1808 -- 1877
Here lies Mary Owens Vineyard
Who rejected Abraham Lincoln's
proposal of marriage in 1837

If anyone is interested I have a picture I could email.
Also of note is that my brother preached at the church beside the
cemetery.

Tombstone Hunter

Paul A. Johnson


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