Note: Part II of the Mary Clemmer Ames series will be available soon. Trying to post several times a week now. Hope that readers do not find this excessive. Any feedback is welcome.
Introduction
In Pt. 1, I explained the purpose of this series is as follows:
There are a few “witnesses” I’ve come across in the historical record that I feel comfortable outing as liars. Some of them may have believed their own stories, and most were simple attention-seekers, not acting out of malice. It is not surprising that so many people tried to insert themselves into the Lincoln legend, though it is a tiny bit surprising how easily some of them did so. But the media likes a good story. Nothing new about that. I intend this series to be a Hall of Shame without much shaming–where someone was particularly egregious, I will call them out. It was usually pretty boring deceit.
When they come to mind, I’ll write them up to warn others. I’m sure some have been questioned already. If anyone thinks I’m wrong, let me know–I definitely don’t want to wrongly accuse someone, especially when they are not around to defend themselves. But I feel pretty confident about the ones I bother to expose.
Pt. 2 can be read here.
Eddie Foy’s False Claims
The purpose of this post is to induct the famous vaudeville performer Eddie Foy into my “Hall of Shame.”
In the early 1900s, and in his 1926 autobiography, Foy gave interviews in which he said his widowed mother was hired by family as Mary’s nurse after Tad’s death, and found her "dreadful charge" who had "gone out of her mind completely.” Foy grew up in Chicago. He said his mother took this position when he was eight years old, and that she had “sole charge of [Mary] for twelve years,” until Mary was committed.
None of this adds up, and the inaccuracies exceed what might be expected of fuzzy childhood memories. Tad died when Foy was about fifteen years old, and Mary did not even survive Tad by twelve years. She was committed only a few years after Tad’s death, and then lived in Springfield for about a year. Yet Foy refers to Mary living in Springfield while under his mother’s care, when she made no known visits there between 1868 and 1875. He also makes other inaccurate claims about her travel patterns.
From the time she first visited Europe in 1868, Mary was often accompanied by a private nurse or servant, especially after Tad’s death. By 1873, it was a regular thing, and remained that way until she was committed in 1875. She didn’t talk about these women very much in surviving letters, but what references do exist do not match the description of Foy’s mother, Ellen Fitzgerald. ("Foy” was a stage name). In 1873, Mary referred to her “faithful colored nurse,” giving no name. She never mentioned to having a white nurse during this time, but she said so little on the subject that she might have. More importantly, she gives no sign of having a servant as consistently present as Foy relates his mother was.
Neither does anyone resembling Ellen Fitzgerald come up in the correspondence related to Mary’s commitment, which is particularly suspicious. Mary was traveling with a nurse when she became acting erratically in March 1875, but this woman is never mentioned by name, and no biographical details are given. She does not seem to have been a long-trusted companion. Mary never mentions that her nurse has children, which seems a bit odd if the nurse was a single mother of a large family.
One piece of evidence advanced in favor of Foy’s claims is a letter making similar claims and attributed to his sister, Earline Foy. This letter, now part of an archive, is actually an account signed by Eddie himself. One of the archivists must have found the signature how to read, and ventured a guess as to what it said—I can’t figure out if Foy had a sister with that name. Ever since, everyone has just run with it, but it is not independent corroborating evidence.
Foy also claimed his mother’s testimony at Mary’s commitment trial was decisive, but there is no record of an Ellen Fitzgerald or private nurse testifying at the trial. He claimed Mary was afraid of gas lighting, which was was probably taken from sensational 1881 newspaper gossip. In 1875, hotel employees had testified she kept the gas burning all night long because she was afraid of the dark. She did not develop a sensitivity to light until later.
It’s probably best to characterize Foy as a shameless self-promoter who believed his own stories than a liar. It appears that Foy may have attended school with Tad briefly in Chicago in the 1860s, and perhaps first developed an interest in the family at that time. His colorful life included performing on the stage with his family and a fourth marriage in his 70s. He claimed to be connected to a suspicious number of notable events and people, allegedly performing at the Iroquois Theater on the night of the famous conflagration. See The Decatur Daily Review, February 16, 1928. He also misrepresented other aspects of his family background.
Perhaps at one point his mother did do some kind of work for Mary, and he exaggerated the story and blended it with newspaper gossip. But he didn’t have any credible inside information. In conclusion, I don’t believe his story is anywhere close to accurate, and it is probably entirely fabricated. It has been given far too much weight by historians, despite the distorted timeline and lack of corroborating evidence. He should not be considered a credible source on the Lincoln family.