New report casts more doubt that museum’s stovepipe hat belonged to Lincoln

A 16-month state study has found no new evidence to authenticate that a multimillion-dollar stovepipe hat purportedly owned by Abraham Lincoln and once displayed at his presidential museum actually belonged to America’s 16th president.

The report by Illinois State Historian Samuel Wheeler found the hat did not appear to match Lincoln’s hat size. It also found the hat was sold in the 1950s to a downstate antique shop for just $1, and its apocryphal Lincoln connection wasn’t even known to descendants of its original owners.

While Wheeler concluded more study is warranted, his findings pour an even heavier dose of skepticism on claims that Lincoln once owned the hat, which was purchased from West Coast collector Louise Taper for display at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.

Wheeler’s 54-page report, obtained by WBEZ, focused on the museum’s lack of due diligence in studying the hat’s provenance before its purchase, among other things. “I believe the past can be instructive, if we take the time to examine it and resolve never to repeat the same mistakes,” he wrote.

The hat, once appraised at $6.5 million, was the cornerstone of a $25 million haul of Lincoln artifacts bought in 2007 by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation using private donations.

At the time of the hat’s purchase, Taper — its seller — sat on the foundation’s board of directors.

A dubious gift to a farmer

The foundation’s official history of the hat, mimicked by past administrations at the museum, held that Lincoln gave the hat to a farmer, William Waller, during a visit to Washington, D.C., during the Civil War. The gesture represented a token of gratitude for taking up Lincoln’s pro-Union, Republican cause in heavily Democratic southern Illinois during the war, officials have said.

That version of events is spelled out on a single piece of paper that dates back to 1958. That’s when Waller’s daughter-in-law signed an affidavit sought by a purchaser of the hat, James Hickey, a state employee charged with curating the state’s vast collection of Lincoln artifacts between the 1950s and 1980s.

Hickey acquired the hat for an undisclosed price from a downstate antique shop, where Waller’s daughter-in-law, Clara Waller, had sold it for just $1 after the 1956 death of her husband, former state Rep. Elbert Waller, according to Wheeler’s report.

Now deceased, Hickey left his job in government in 1984 after questions arose about the propriety of him being in control of state-owned Lincoln memorabilia while at the same time acquiring similar items for his own personal collection — a practice Wheeler described in his report as “widely recognized today as unethical.”

Hickey would go on to loan the hat to the state on various occasions, including the 1981 drawing between former Republican Gov. Richard Ogilvie and former Democratic Gov. Sam Shapiro to decide which party would control legislative redistricting during the 1980s. In 1988, former Gov. James Thompson sought to have the hat included in a traveling exhibit of Lincoln artifacts bound for Taiwan as part of an effort to recruit Asian businesses to Illinois. The hat was appraised then as being worth $15,000.

How the hat sold for millions

Two years later, in 1990, Hickey sold the hat to Taper for an undisclosed price. In 2007, Taper sold the hat to the Lincoln foundation, which buys artifacts for the museum in Springfield.

One of the main behind-the-scenes brokers of the deal between Taper and the Lincoln foundation was then-state historian Thomas Schwartz, a longtime friend of Taper’s and Hickey’s hand-picked successor.

Schwartz has declined past interview requests by members of the news media but spoke with Wheeler during his research on the hat.

In the days leading up to the sale, Schwartz traveled to Taper’s California home to inventory all of the items coming to Springfield, which included things like the blood-stained gloves Mary Todd Lincoln wore at Ford’s Theater on the night of her husband’s assassination.

“When his attention turned to the stovepipe hat, the centerpiece of the acquisition, Dr. Schwartz was shocked to learn its provenance was much more tenuous than he previously believed,” Wheeler wrote.

The report says Schwartz had assumed Hickey got the hat from Lincoln’s great-grandson during a trip to Vermont. But then he saw Clara Waller’s 1958 affidavit revealing the hat’s history was entirely based on circumstantial evidence.

“Instead of alerting [the foundation] that the most valuable item in the collection would require much more research, Dr. Schwartz dismissed his concerns,” Wheeler wrote. “Like Taper, Dr. Schwartz concluded the hat must be a genuine Lincoln artifact because Hickey believed it to be so.”

So the hat became part of the $25 million trove of artifacts Taper sold the Lincoln foundation.

The foundation has yet to fully repay all the money it borrowed to acquire the collection from Taper. Recently, the foundation floated the idea of a taxpayer-supported bailout to repay the remaining balance, but Gov. J.B. Pritzker rejected that idea.

Neither Schwartz nor Taper could be reached by WBEZ for comment.

A Chicago Sun-Times story in 2012 first raised questions about the hat. The ensuing fallout would have “immense implications for the repayment of the Taper debt,” Wheeler wrote.

In that story, when pressed for proof that William Waller traveled to Washington during the Civil War to meet Lincoln, a top museum official acknowledged there wasn’t any and that the institution had taken the “historic liberty” to change the story.

Instead of Lincoln giving it to Waller during the Civil War, the museum contended it was much more plausible that the handoff occurred during an 1858 debate between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in southern Illinois — again, an assertion for which no proof existed.

Over the years, the foundation took steps to have the hat secretly swabbed by the FBI for possible Lincoln DNA, which yielded no positive results.

More steps to authenticate hat — and new evidence

Fast-forward to August 2018, when Wheeler was ordered by former museum director Alan Lowe to conduct his study. His report, released by Pritzker’s administration, shows an exhaustive — but still fruitless — effort to tie the hat to Lincoln.

Wheeler analyzed hundreds of pages of writings by Waller’s son, Elbert, the former state legislator, held by archivists at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

But Wheeler found not a single mention of the hat in any documents, which he called “troubling.”

Wheeler also voiced skepticism about Clara Waller’s decision to part ways with a seemingly irreplaceable artifact shortly after her husband’s death.

Her “decision to sell the stovepipe hat to a local antique store for just $1 is concerning,” he wrote. “If the stovepipe hat was indeed one of Elbert Waller’s prized possessions and was a tangible link connecting the Waller family to Abraham Lincoln, why did Clara not give the hat to Elbert’s surviving son ... or his grandson, who lived in Kansas?”

Wheeler took the extraordinary step of interviewing some of the Wallers’ descendants. He spoke with multiple relatives who had vivid memories of the couple, but none of them ever remembered the Wallers saying they owned a hat that once belonged to Lincoln.

State of Illinois

During the course of his research, Wheeler received — via Schwartz — two previously unknown letters written by Clara Waller, including one that alleged William Waller held “a position we would now call (FBI).” That job led Waller to Washington, D.C., to meet with Lincoln during the Civil War where the two men “traded hats” after discovering they had the same hat size, the letter claimed.

But Wheeler dismissed the document as unverifiable.

One last area of focus for Wheeler was a 2013 set of talking points produced by the state to “quell any doubts about the stovepipe hat’s provenance.” Wheeler asserted that document contained numerous “untruths,” including a claim about the actual size of the hat.

The state has long maintained Lincoln wore a size 7 1/8, which it said matched the hat. But Wheeler found something else. “I used a tailor’s tape and tried to get an accurate measurement of the hat,” he said. “I measured the hat at 7 1/4” meaning a much looser fit if it truly were Lincoln’s hat.

The verdict? More research needed

Despite the mountain of evidence he presented indicating otherwise, Wheeler was not able to make a final determination as to whether Lincoln ever actually owned the hat.

Instead, he said more research is “abundantly warranted.” He recommends having costume experts specializing in 19th century hats assess the discrepancies involving the size, the absence of a document storage area and the markings on the brim that the museum has presented to thousands of museum visitors as worn areas from Lincoln’s fingerprints.

He also advised that any future acquisitions be preceded by a thorough assessment of the items’ provenance.

“No matter what the final determination proves to be on the stovepipe hat, it is clear that no one at [the museum] conducted any research on the object before it was acquired in 2007,” Wheeler said. Schwartz only relied on “the word of his predecessor and mentor, James Hickey, who had a clear financial interest in claiming the stovepipe hat was Lincoln’s.”

Wheeler added the foundation should avoid making future multimillion-dollar transactions with its board members, as was the case with Louise Taper.

“By doing so, the board invited criticism from those who would claim the transaction unfairly benefited one of its members,” he said.

What happens next isn’t entirely clear; there doesn’t seem to be any serious effort to attempt to recoup the millions the foundation had borrowed to buy the hat.

In a statement, Pritzker’s newly installed chairman of the presidential library board hinted at a continued presence of the hat at the museum, though its display was put on hiatus by the past museum director.

“Dr. Wheeler and other historians at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum have done important work in trying to track the history of this object,” said the chairman, former federal Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “We look forward to working with the foundation to explore continued research and ultimately decide how the hat can best be used to educate museum visitors.”

Dave McKinney covers state politics and government for WBEZ. To read and listen to more of his work, go to wbez.org.