Mary Todd was born on December 13, 1818 in Lexington, Kentucky. As a member of a prominent and wealthy Kentucky family, Todd received all the benefits of such stature, including receiving an unusually high level of education. In 1839, she moved to Springfield, Illinois, where she lived with her sister's family. In Springfield, she met Abraham Lincoln, who at that point was working to establish himself as an attorney. In 1842, Todd and Lincoln married. Over the next ten years, they had four sons, only two of who reached adulthood. In addition to fulfilling the role of wife and mother, Lincoln also encouraged and supported her husband's political career. During the Civil War, following her husband's election to the presidency in 1860, Lincoln was often criticized for her extravagant spending and for the disloyalty of her siblings. When the Lincolns moved into the White House in 1861, Mary remodeled and redecorated much of the mansion, spending well more than the budget she had been given. In the midst of war, journalists and politicians condemned her as extravagant. Many in the North questioned Lincoln's loyalty because of her southern sympathizing brothers and sisters. Three of her half-brothers fought in the Confederate army, and her brother-in-law, Ben Hardin Helm, was a southern general. After Hardin was killed at the Battle of Chickamauga, his widow, Mary's sister Emilie, came to the White House to be with her sister. Washington press made much of a Confederate widow living in the presidential mansion and used the incident to question Mary Lincoln's loyalty. A similar response came when Martha Todd White, another of Mary's sisters and wife of a Confederate major, came to Washington and bragged (falsely) upon her return to the South that she had used a presidential pass to smuggle goods through Union lines. During the war, Mary Lincoln suffered two major personal tragedies. First, in 1862, her son Willie died. Following Willie's death, Lincoln began participating in sances and meeting with spiritualists who she hoped could connect her with her son. Then, on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln. With her son Thomas (Tad), Lincoln traveled to Europe where she remained for several years. In 1871, tragedy struck once again when Tad died of pleurisy. In 1875, Robert Todd Lincoln, the Lincolns' only living son, had her committed to a mental institution, where she lived for three months. After her release, she spent the last years of her life in France, only returning to the states when her health failed. She died on July 16, 1882.

Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1987).