Remembering Peggy Lincoln Beckwith
“I never asked to be born a Lincoln, I’m as far from him as anyone.”
— Peggy Beckwith
Mary Lincoln “Peggy” Beckwith was the great-granddaughter of President Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. She made Hildene her year-round residence from the time she inherited the family home in 1938 until her death in 1975.
Jessie Lincoln described in a 1934 letter to her mother, Mary Harlan Lincoln, that for her daughter, Peggy, Hildene was “the only place she loves on earth.”
A beloved member of the Manchester community, Peggy was a fiercely independent, creative woman with wide-ranging interests. During her time at Hildene, Peggy enjoyed farming and maple sugaring, painting and photography, polo and golf, and flying airplanes. Over the years, she had a menagerie of pets, including dogs, horses, and raccoons. (Pictured here: Jesse Lincoln with her daughter, Peggy.)
A Lincoln Legacy: Remembering Peggy Lincoln Beckwith, our newest exhibit, provides a view of Peggy’s many interests. On display are her golf clubs, her typewriter, her daily “logue” book with entries from 1958 to 1960, her guitar, one of her oil paintings, and a brown leather jacket with an ermine fur collar. (Pictured here: Peggy on the Hildene Terrace.)
The exhibit also includes documentary footage combined with recordings from oral history interviews conducted in 1979, shortly after she died. (Pictured here: Peggy by Robert’s Portrait at her grandfather's home in Washington, D.C., known as the Laird-Dunlop house.)
