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Material and photographs contributed by Jean Powers Soman,
great-grandaughter of Samuel G. Alschuler
Samuel G. Alschuler, born in
Bavaria in 1826, operated a photographic gallery in
Urbana, Illinois when political hopeful Abraham
Lincoln came by to have a portrait taken.
Lincoln was wearing an old linen
duster which was inappropriate for the portrait, and
had no other coat available. The photographer, about
a foot shorter than the circuit lawyer, loaned his
own coat.
"The coat belonged to the
photographer, Samuel G. Alschuler, an immigrant from
Bavaria, and Lincoln's arms extended through the
sleeves "about a quarter of a yard." Lincoln had agreed to pose for Alschuler, but when he showed up in his old linen
duster, the cameraman loaned him a velvet-collared
jacket. A witness wrote later that Lincoln "was
overcome with merriment" when the short coat "proved
to be a bad misfit." In developing the portrait,
Alschuler left his fingerprints near the bottom,
visible as a series of weird arcs in the lower right
corner of the enlargement. The original glass ambrotype was
bought directly from Alschuler by W. H. Somers, a
circuit-court clerk who knew and admired Lincoln. A
photographic copy of the ambrotype was subsequently
owned by Lincoln's fellow lawyer and biographer,
Henry C. Whitney, who first met Lincoln in 1854
while traveling from Danville to Springfield."*
Whitney tells the story of the photographer's coat
in Life on the Circuit with Lincoln.
In the fall of 1857, Lincoln
attended at the photograph gallery of Sam.
Alschuler in Urbana, to have his picture taken:
he was attired in a linen coat: doubtless the
same one which he wore to Cincinnati just
before, and which Stanton so rudely lampooned.
The artist suggested that he should wear his
black coat. Lincoln replied that he had left it
home, and had none other there.
"Try my coat," said the
accommodating artist: and the future emancipator
was taken in a borrowed coat, with a velvet
collar on, which shows plainly:—the picture
being still in existence. On another occasion,
earlier, a very poor artist induced him to sit
and took a daguerreotype which resembled (not
Lincoln but—say) the Wandering Jew: and exposed
it in his outer show-case.*
Nearly three years later, Lincoln
posed again for Alschuler, this time at the request
of Whitney. The second sitting is the last of the
1860 photographs and Lincoln's first with a beard.
"The first whiskers sprout:
Photograph taken Sunday, November 25, 1860.
Picturing the President-elect with a half-beard,
this unique portrait was preserved by Henry C.
Whitney, a youthful attorney who had traveled the
Illinois circuit with Lincoln. Some thirty years
later it turned up in the files of Chicago
photographer C. D. Mosher, and was saved from
destruction by Herman Herbert Wells Fay, a custodian
of the Lincoln Tomb."*
Lithograph of the last Lincoln photograph taken by Alschuler.
Lincoln funeral procession in Chicago, (May 1, 1865).
[University of Illinois Library Collection]
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