U.S. Presidential libraries became all the more familiar to me when my late father donated funds to the Richard Nixon Library and the Ronald Reagan Library. Dr. Roberto Hung, J.D. has been acknowledged for helping and contributing to preserve U.S. Presidential history in the making.

While reading an article about U.S. Presidential libraries in the Spring of 2002, I read that until 1939, these did not exist nor were presidential documents preserved after the U.S. president left office—Home & Away, AAA Chicago Motor Club, Illinois/N. Indiana, March-April 2002. The first U.S. President to donate his presidential documents to the government was the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also contributed 16 acres of his family estate in Hyde Park, New York, as a location to preserve U.S. government history.

In 1955, the U.S. Congress passed the Presidential Libraries Act whereby it was established to maintain private and federally funded libraries for U.S. presidents to preserve their historical documents and memorabilia. Among current and existing U.S. Presidential libraries, we have:

The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum in West Branch, Iowa
The Truman Presidential Museum & Library in Independence, Missouri
The Eisenhower Library & Museum in Abilene, Kansas
The John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts
The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum at U of Texas in Austin, Texas
The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California
The Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum at the U of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan
The Jimmy Carter Library & Museum in Atlanta, Georgia
The Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library & Museum, near L.A. in Simi Valley, Calif.
The George Bush Presidential Library & Museum in College Station, Texas
The William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas
The Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois

 
On Tuesday, 19 November 2002, Springfield, Illinois inaugurated the Abraham Lincoln Library to preserve and study the former president’s historical documents, Civil War records, and Lincoln era memorabilia in the Prairie State where he lived from 1837 to 1861. Local news on TV featured Lincoln’s shiny copper plate profile made from copper Lincoln pennies, as well as the former president’s personal belongings, artifacts, sculptures, and presidential heirlooms collected and compiled over the years.The life and times of former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, our sixteenth president, will be researched and scrutinized as a sign of the American Civil War period. The Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum is still under construction in downtown Springfield, Illinois—general completion is expected to be in 2004.

Before Abraham Lincoln became the 16th U.S. President, he was elected to the Illinois state legislature, studied law, and was licensed to practice in Sangamon County, Illinois. He had been also a deputy county surveyor in Petersburg in 1836. Prior to Lincoln’s life in Washington, D.C., he practiced law in Springfield with his partner William Herndon, from 1843 to 1852. The Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices is an Illinois State Historic Site in Springfield. As a lawyer, Abraham Lincoln practiced in the Eighth Judicial Court in Illinois—at the Mount Pulaski Courthouse State Historic Site, northeast of Springfield, and at the Metamora Courthouse State Historic Site, (1845-1857), 15 miles northeast of Peoria.

The 2001-2002 Illinois Handbook of Government features and highlights the Illinois State Library’s Internet portal, Find-It! Illinois, your best source of information for State library, education, and government introduced by the Secretary of State, Jesse White at http:/www.finditillinois.org The library network system links all the Friends of the Library in Illinois and nationwide.

Editor’s Notes by Gardenia C. Hung, M.A., B.A.
–2002 Friends of the Helen M. Plum Library Winter Newsletter–

A Reprinted  Article