Last week I shared with you details of my weekend visit to the Lincoln Tomb in Springfield, Illinois. The trip was a birthday getaway arranged by my wife Rhonda. As part of the trip, we visited a charming log cabin souvenir shop that sits just yards from the Oak Ridge Cemetery gates, Lincoln’s final resting place. The store, known as the Lincoln Souvenir & Gift Shop, is run by Melissa R. King, a direct descendant (by marriage) of the original owners, Bess and Nellie King. As I wandered the store, I noticed a framed photo on the wall of the office in the back of the shop. It was a face that was very familiar to me. It was Herbert Wells Fay.
If you had visited Lincoln’s Tomb during the 1920s through the 1940s, you most likely would have been warmly greeted by Mr. Fay. He was as much a fixture at the tomb as Gutzon Borglum’s Lincoln statue. For 28 years, Fay was the tomb custodian, historian, archivist, tour guide and ambassador to visitors from across the world that came to pay respects to the slain president. When he retired in 1948 at age 89, he estimated that four million visitors had signed the guest registers at the tomb on his watch.
Mr. Fay lived in the stone house west of the monument. From 1921 to 1949, he spent nearly every day at the tomb, studying and writing when not conducting tours. A former newspaper editor, he wrote incessantly, including a daily column called “Tomb Notes” for the Illinois State Journal newspaper detailing what happened at the tomb and meticulously listing the names of visitors and something of their ancestors that he learned. For example, he would have noted my visit: “Alan Hunter visited the tomb today. His Gr-Gr-Grandfather was Gilbert W. Piercefield who served in the 33rd Indiana Volunteer Infantry.” Fay entertained visiting politicians, celebrities, royals and dignitaries with the same care and detail as he did the average Joe.
In addition to being an attentive tomb tour guide, Fay was a relentless, life-long collector of Lincoln memorabilia. He amassed an unprecedented collection of over 2 million historical photographs, documents, and artifacts valued at a quarter million dollars in 1945. Even before he became the custodian at the Lincoln Tomb in 1921, Fay amassed over fifty thousand photographs of some of the most notable people in the world. His collection included ninety different images of Lincoln as well as photographs of kings, queens, presidents, ex-presidents, Supreme Court Justices, U.S. Senators, representatives, authors, scientists, inventors, artists, stage stars, circus performers and more. Mr. Fay kept much of his collection in what he called his “lab,” a crowded room in the back of the tomb; a move that would come back to haunt him.
In an extensive profile of Fay featured in the Illinois State Journal Feb. 11, 1945, Fay said, “collecting was born with me. At age three (in 1862) while I lay in my crib, so my mother has told me, I saw a picture (of Abraham Lincoln) in a paper and with the family scissors I cut it out and saved it. At six years, when Lincoln was assassinated, I was deep into the hobby.” Fay’s grandfather, Horace, served in the Illinois state legislature alongside Lincoln and started his grandson’s collection off by giving young Herbert a pair of handwritten letters Mr. Lincoln had written to him.
In 1917, the Illinois Department of Public Works Division of Parks and Memorials took over the operation and care of the Lincoln Tomb, which by then was looking a little outdated and careworn. Memorial Hall was overflowing with display cases filled with Lincoln mementos, resembling more a museum storeroom than a hallowed final resting place. Lincoln’s burial chamber could only be reached by an exterior path that encircled the monument. The white marble sarcophagus that rested within the open-air concrete vault was rather inglorious and typically covered with a blanket of wreaths and flowers, some fresher than others. Dangling unceremoniously from the ceiling above it, a single, bare electric light bulb illuminated the room.
When noted tomb custodian and Civil War Veteran Major Edward S. Johnson died in 1921, DeKalb, Illinois native Herbert W. Fay was appointed his successor. Fay’s reputation as “a noted Lincoln collector” made him a logical choice to oversee and reorganize the relics in Memorial Hall. The kindly, idiosyncratic Fay soon became a popular figure in Springfield. He quickly added his own collection of Lincoln relics and photographs to the glass-topped display cases in Memorial Hall and they became the focal point of his tomb tours. He encouraged visitors to ask about the mementos and provided elaborate accounts of how each one was acquired in response. His entertaining tomb tours were loquacious and dramatic and usually concluded with Fay retelling the story of the attempt to steal Lincoln’s remains in 1876. “To those of us who know him,” wrote one admirer, “the venerable Custodian of the Tomb is second only to the shrine itself.”
Fay’s tenure coincided with the rise of the American automobile and the emergence of the family road-trip. After all, Route 66, known variously as “The Mother Road” and the “Main Street of America,” ran straight through Springfield. As more Americans acquired cars and better roads were built, the numbers of visitors to the Lincoln Tomb increased rapidly. The surge of “Americanism” after World War I made the patriotic symbolism of Lincoln especially appealing, making a visit to the Lincoln Tomb a “must see” family destination. Trouble was, along with an increase in visitors came an increase in wear and tear on the tomb. By the time of the dedication of the glistening new Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC in 1922, the Lincoln Tomb was falling apart. Custodian Fay remarked, “Visitors comment on its condition,” and the tomb’s state of disrepair reflected poorly on the state and its favorite son.
Fay, ever the loyal tomb advocate, took his case to the local newspapers. His idea was a grand one: an enormous new Lincoln shrine near the existing tomb that could be seen from a distance of twenty miles. Fay’s proposed new monument was to be dominated by a towering pedestal surmounted by a huge statue of Lincoln. Together, pedestal and statue would be five hundred feet tall— nearly as tall as the Washington Monument’s 555 feet. Atop the statue of Lincoln was to be “a powerful searchlight to guide air-mail pilots.” The tower was to be surrounded by a huge circular museum complex, interspersed with colonnades and triumphal arches. Within the many rooms would be vast display spaces for Lincoln memorabilia, documents, and photographs, depicting “a panorama of (Lincoln’s) life that would give a patriotic thrill to every visitor.” Unlike the Lincoln Memorial, said Fay, “a thousand visits would not exhaust its thrill.”
Although Fay’s proposed monument would have made a splendid showcase for his Lincoln collection, the State of Illinois had more austere plans for the Lincoln Tomb. And those plans did not include the display of Herbert W. Fay’s, or anyone else’s, collection. By the mid-1920s, a growing number of visitors were voicing their disapproval of Fay’s lectures and relic displays. Disgruntled guests wrote letters to state officials claiming that many of his mementos and photographs in Memorial Hall were unrelated to Lincoln, including pictures of random famous people. One letter lamented that one incongruent photo was titled “Someone’s dog at the Lincoln Home.”
For one visitor, Memorial Hall was “a great accumulation of books, papers, pictures, and knickknacks” that seemed out of place in the tomb. The Hall itself was marred by Fay’s crude placards “posted or pasted on the marble walls.” One of them read “Lincoln’s blood, ask how and when it came here.” Another said, “Ask how Lincoln came to raise whiskers.” To some tomb visitors, Fay’s lectures were simply disjointed collections of anecdotes and trivia, and they found the “merriment and laughter” they elicited inappropriate for such a solemn setting. “This custodian wants to tell a lot of asinine folk lore stories,” complained one citizen, who said that Fay would make a “splendid lecturer in a ‘chamber of horrors’ or as a barker for a side show.” A change was needed, urged one citizens’ group. “Under the existing conditions, is it possible to show that reverence which every true American should and really wishes to show at the tomb of Lincoln?”
Illinois officials concluded that the relics should be removed from the monument. Without the distraction of the artifact collection, said one state official, “visitors would leave the tomb impressed with the solemnity of the spot and not as they do now with the thought that it is simply a museum.” However, Fay side-stepped the issue by pointing out that the structural deterioration of the tomb was the preeminent pressing problem.
In March of 1929 engineers under the direction of Governor Louis Emmerson discovered that water had severely damaged the masonry, rusted out the stone placement anchors, washed out the mortar joints, and stained the stone with shockingly inappropriate blood red rust stains. Many of the stones inside the monument and outside on the promenade deck were loose and wobbly, allowing water to seep into the rooms below, thereby threatening the foundation. Worse, the burial chamber also leaked, streaks of dirt and water marks stained the marble walls inside. The electrical wiring was downright dangerous; in one area, live current was found flowing through a “lamp cord suspended from nails.” The statuary was crudely patched and in need of restoration. The public outhouses were unsanitary, “unsightly,” and “inexcusable,” said the report.
The reconstruction began in the spring of 1930. As the granite facing of the obelisk was removed, it was discovered that the brick behind it had seriously deteriorated. Plans were immediately changed, and the entire monument was dismantled and rebuilt. It was also soon discovered that as originally built, the tomb was “out of square,” with “many inaccuracies” in its construction. The engineers were amazed that there wasn’t more water damage and deterioration and that the monument hadn’t fallen in on itself already. For his part, H.W. Fay was deeply concerned about his priceless collection held within the tomb.
Next week: Part 3: Herbert W. Fay and why he matters.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest book is “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
