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Reflections
The day Lincoln left his fingerprints behind : Reflections : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisThe day Lincoln left his fingerprints behind
| by Roger Matile
| 1/25/2007
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We could call this story “How Roger’s distant cousin made a mess of things but managed to preserve a bit of Lincoln history anyway.”
It seems my distant cousin, Gustave Matile, served for a few months as one of Abraham Lincoln’s private secretaries during the Civil War. How that happened is a bit of historical serendipity itself. And how he added a fascinating chapter to the lore of Abraham Lincoln is another.
Gustave Eugene Matile was born Aug. 11, 1839 in the Canton of Neuchatel, Switzerland. Neuchatel is the homeland of the “modern” Matile family. Back in the mid 1300s, two Matile brothers, both trained soldiers from Lombardy, immigrated to Neuchatel to work as mercenaries for the Austrian noble who controlled the area at that time. From these two soldiers of fortune have descended all members of the modern Matile family.
George Agustus Matile, Gustave’s father, was an academic who moved in rarefied circles. Among other luminaries, he was a friend of Louis Agassiz, a fellow native of the French-speaking portion of Switzerland who science historians have dubbed one of the founding fathers of the American scientific tradition (he’s also the ancestor of tennis great Andre Agassiz).
George Matile was a professor of history who taught at the University of Neuchatel as well as in Berne and at universities in Berlin and Heidelberg, Germany. He had two sons who made names for themselves, Gustave and Leon Albert. Leon was a Union Army veteran of the Civil War who also fought in the Spanish American War, eventually reaching the rank of brigadier general.
Gustave’s branch of the Matile family immigrated to the U.S. in 1849, where they settled in New York State. George mostly worked for the U.S. Government with the exception of one year during which he worked as an “antiquarian” for the museum at Princeton University in New Jersey. After Lincoln’s election, George served as an advisor to Secretary of State William H. Seward, who he presumably met while participating in New York politics.
It’s likely George was able to get Gustave, who had just achieved his majority when the Civil War began, a job as a clerk at the Interior Department. Then as now in Washington, it was who, not what, you knew that counted when seeking a job. Gustave apparently read law during his government service as well as carrying out whatever duties he was assigned.
In 1863, the Lincoln Administration was not only fully engaged in fighting the Civil War, but it was also trying to start Lincoln’s reelection campaign at the same time. Lincoln’s staff consisted, essentially, of two men. John Nicolay and John Hay, two young men from Illinois, loyally served Lincoln throughout his Presidency. But in 1863, with the press of campaigning, they needed some help. So they put out feelers for a dependable assistant, and Gustave’s name popped up.
Unofficially, Gustave was employed as Hay’s undersecretary. While Nicolay was away on campaign and other business, Matile and Hay carried out the staff work of the Administration, work that now employs thousands of people. Because his transfer was unofficial and temporary, Matile’s name apparently does not appear on the White House employment roster. One of the only clues he worked for Hay at all is a passing reference in an Oct. 10, 1864 note from Hay to Nicolay published in “Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay” compiled by Tyler Dennett and published in 1939. Wrote Hay: “Here are your mails for this morning. We are very busy. Mr. Matile is sick.”
And, of course, there’s the Lincoln fingerprint.
In late August 1864, Samuel Newell Holmes, one of Matile’s New York friends wrote to him asking if he could get an autograph from the President. We can only surmise what Matile thought of this request, but he obviously went ahead and asked. The accommodating Lincoln dipped his pen in his inkwell and signed his familiar “A. Lincoln” signature on a scrap of paper and gave it back to Matile. But when he signed, Lincoln’s pen apparently left a drop of ink on the scrap, and as he handed it back to Matile, he left his fingerprints in ink on the paper.
When Matile sent the autograph back to Holmes, he included a short note explaining that the fingerprint inkblots were Lincoln’s: “The finger marks are also his. They will do as the olden times seals that were made by impressing the thumb on the wax.”
Holmes kept the autograph and passed it to his daughter when he died. It was sold upon her death and was acquired in 1949 by William A. Steiger of Springfield, a Lincoln collector. In 1953, Steiger sent our family a letter seeking information on Gustave, but since he was of a distant branch of the family we were of little help.
For his part, Gustave continued reading law. He moved to Green Bay, Wis. in 1865 where he practiced law. He also practiced law in Minneapolis and Duluth-Superior in Minnesota before moving back to Green Bay where he was appointed to the federal bench where he served as U.S. Court Commissioner for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. He was a member of the Wisconsin Bar and the Brown County Bar Association in Wisconsin and also served a stint as the Swiss counsel at Green Bay. He died of cancer on June 17, 1908. The Green Bay Gazette, in Matile’s obituary, described him as “one of the best known lawyers who practiced during Green Bay’s early history.”
Today, the Lincoln autograph and fingerprint reside in the collections of the Illinois State Historical Society, proof positive that some mistakes, even ink blots, can have a historical value all their own.
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