The Forgotten Letter of Grace Bedell
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| Abraham Lincoln and Grace Bedell photos. Both were taken about the time that Bedell wrote her second letter. |
In 2007, a forgotten letter surfaced in the National Archives — written by a teenage girl who had once changed Abraham Lincoln’s face. Historian Karen Needles, Director of the Lincoln Archives Digital Project, discovered it in Treasury Department records: a quiet plea for help, addressed to President Lincoln, asking for a position in the U.S. Treasury.
What makes the letter remarkable is not only its rediscovery, but its author.
The young woman seeking work was Grace Bedell — the same girl whose famous “Beard Letter” had helped shape Lincoln’s public image four years earlier. [1]
By 1864, the world Grace had known in Westfield felt very far away. Three years had passed since Lincoln stepped off his inauguration train and called her forward from the crowd. In that time, the war had deepened, the country had changed, and her own family had suffered losses. Her father’s finances had collapsed, leaving them in a precarious position. [2]
At fifteen, Grace was no longer the child who once offered Lincoln advice about his appearance. She was a young woman trying to shoulder part of her family’s burden. When she learned that the Treasury Department was hiring women — prized for their careful eyes in spotting counterfeit notes — she saw a rare chance to earn steady wages and help at home. [2]
So on January 14, 1864, Grace wrote to Lincoln again. This time, her letter was not about beards or elections. It was a request for opportunity. She reminded him that he had once signed himself as her “true friend and well-wisher,” and she hoped he might prove it by helping her secure meaningful work.
Contemporary accounts suggest Lincoln genuinely cherished her first letter. According to a reminiscence preserved by the Lincoln National Life Foundation, Lincoln later told a Westfield acquaintance that Grace’s note was “unique… so different from the many self‑seeking and threatening ones” he received during the campaign, and that it came to him “as a relief and a pleasure.” That memory may explain why Grace believed he would help her again in 1864. [3]
A Letter That Was Nearly Forgotten
Because of her childhood letter and Lincoln’s memorable meeting with her, Grace Bedell was no longer just another citizen. Her rediscovered 1864 letter adds depth to a familiar anecdote — revealing that Grace still saw Lincoln as someone she could trust, someone she believed might help her in a moment of need.
It didn’t change history the way her first letter did, but it reveals the young woman she had become: earnest, determined, and hopeful.
Correcting the Miscount of Grace's Letters
Since its discovery, historians have often referred to Grace’s 1864 letter as her second letter to Lincoln. But that isn’t accurate.
In truth, it was her third.
Grace herself makes this clear. In her 1864 letter, she writes:
I have addressed one letter to you before, pertaining to this subject... [1]
Only two of her letters survive today:
✔ The famous "Beard Letter" from October 15, 1860.
✔ The 2007 discovery of her job request from January 14, 1864.
But the missing one is historically real. A ghost in the record, perhaps, but real even if it remains lost to time. So, Grace Bedell didn’t write to Lincoln twice.
She wrote three times.
Why Lincoln Never Answered
Both job request letters went unanswered. Historians believe Lincoln likely never saw the 1864 letter at all; the earlier job request she referenced has never been found, so its fate is unknown. Karen Needles noted that Lincoln’s secretary, John Hay, was out of town when the 1864 letter arrived — meaning it may have been filed directly with Treasury applications rather than placed on Lincoln’s desk.
Needles believes that had Lincoln seen the letter, it would have lifted his spirits during a dark wartime winter.
And he would have answered it.
Grace seemed to believe that too. She wrote:
…not believing that your natural kindness of heart…would prompt you to pass it by unanswered. [2]
Whatever the case, Grace never received the position she hoped for. Her letter disappeared into the Treasury files — until its rediscovery in 2007.
Yet the letter reveals something important: Grace’s persistence, ambition, and quiet determination to shape her own future. The rest of her life proves this.
Grace’s Later Life: A Quiet Frontier Resilience
Lincoln’s silence — whether accidental or bureaucratic — meant Grace had to build her future without the help she once hoped for. And she did.
On December 3, 1867, at nineteen, she married George Billings, a Civil War veteran who worked as a wagon‑train captain, guiding settlers westward. By 1870, the couple made their home in Delphos, Kansas, a small town north of Salina.
The girl from New York became a frontier woman. She learned to shoot, carried a pistol in her purse, and survived everything the prairie could throw at her: droughts, fires, grasshopper plagues, and tornadoes. [2]
Their home even crossed paths with frontier legend Wild Bill Hickok, who was a frequent dinner guest until his death in Deadwood in 1876. [2]
Grace never traded on her connection to the Great Emancipator. Instead, she lived a life of quiet substance—raising a family, anchoring a frontier town, and leaning on the same grit that had prompted her to write to the President in 1864. In 1935, at eighty-two years old, she finally shared her memories for a small pamphlet; her account was modest, matter-of-fact, and remarkably sharp even after seventy-five years. [3] She passed away just one year later, only two days shy of her 88th birthday.
Today, the towns of Delphos, Kansas, and Westfield, New York, honor Grace Bedell with memorials—quiet tributes to a life that stretched far beyond a single childhood anecdote. While history remembers the little girl who suggested a beard, the archives reveal the woman she became: earnest, ambitious, and unyielding. She was a woman who eventually found her own way, even when the "true friend" she reached out to couldn't answer the call.
This is another anecdote from the archives of Abraham Lincoln, Storyteller.
Mac
FYI: Grace Bedell's third letter is published it its entirety below the Works Cited section.
🎩 Want to know how Grace Bedell’s words reshaped Lincoln’s public image—and American politics? Read the story behind the beard. [Read: "The Young Lady Who Changed Lincoln’s Image—And American Politics" ]
🤠 Ever heard the frontier tale where a man loses a bet by shouting “Izzard by G—d!” in a frontier spelling contest? This is a lost Davy Crockett story—preserved only in a letter to Abraham Lincoln. Humor, history, and a forgotten alphabet quirk collide in one of the strangest gems tucked inside the Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. 👉 Read the full tale here.
📚 Works Cited
[1] Lincoln, Abraham. “To Grace Bedell, October 19, 1860.” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 4. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 5, 2025.
[2] Chetwynd, Sally Morong. “Grace Bedell (1848–1936).” Brass Castle Arts, November 1, 2010. Accessed May 5, 2025.
[3] Lincoln National Life Foundation. Lincoln Puts on (H)airs: Lincoln’s Beard: Reproduction of Correspondence Between Abraham Lincoln and Grace Bedell. Fort Wayne, IN: Lincolniana Publishers, 1935.
Albion, Orleans Co., N.Y. Jan. 14, 1864
Pres Lincoln,
After a great deal of forethought on the subject, I have concluded to address you, asking your aid in obtaining a situation. Do you remember before your election receiving a letter from a little girl residing at Westfield in Chautauqua Co. advising the wearing of whiskers as an improvement to your face? I am that little girl grown to the size of a woman.
I believe in your answer to that letter you signed yourself “Your true friend and well-wisher.” Will you not show yourself my friend now?
My father, during the last few years, lost nearly all his property, and although we have never known want, I feel that I ought and could do something for myself. If I only knew what that “something” was. I have heard that a large number of girls are employed constantly and with good wages at Washington cutting Treasury notes and other things pertaining to that Department. Could I not obtain a situation there?
I know I could if you would exert your unbounded influence—a word from you would secure me a good-paying situation, which would at least enable me to support myself, if not to help my parents. This, at present, is my highest ambition.
My parents are ignorant of this application to you for assistance. If you require proof of my family's respectability, I can name persons here whose names may not be unknown to you.
We have always resided here, excepting the two years we were at Westfield. I have addressed one letter to you before, pertaining to this subject, but receiving no answer, I chose rather to think you had failed to receive it, not believing that your natural kindness of heart, of which I have heard so much, would prompt you to pass it by unanswered.
Direct to this place.
Grace G. Bedell
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