Lincoln Memorial Shrine & AK Smiley Library Tour
June 2, 2018
The Southern California chapter of the Manuscript Society will visit the Lincoln Memorial Shrine http://www.lincolnshrine.org/ and AK Smiley Library in Redlands, California. http://www.akspl.org/ June 2, 2018. The group will view some early California documents at the library before heading to the shrine. This is the only museum and archive west of the Mississippi dedicated solely to the study of Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War.
Redlands was the winter home of Robert Watchorn (1858-1944), an English miner who immigrated to the United States in 1880 and who amassed a fortune with the Watchorn Oil and Gas Company. A great admirer of Lincoln, he collected books, artifacts and manuscripts associated with Lincoln’s life and times. After the death of his son in 1925, Watchorn decided that a shrine to Lincoln would be a way to memorialize him. The shrine first opened in 1932 as a one-room octagonal building. Long after the death of Watchorn, two wings were added in 1998. The museum caters to everyone from elementary school students to historians.
Interested in attending? Contact Beverly Hill at bhill@manuscript.org