William Henry Herndon

​Born in Kentucky, William Herndon was brought to Sangamon County, Illinois, as a child.  Study at the prep department of Illinois College inspired a love of reading a strongly antislavery outlook.  In 1844 Herndon became Abraham Lincoln's third and final law partner.  On a few occasions during the 1850s he represented alleged fugitive slaves as they fought legal efforts to enslave them.  In 1855 he served as Springfield's mayor. 

Even before Abraham Lincoln's death Herndon planned a biography of his partner.  He collected reminiscences from many who had known Lincoln in the early days.  The book he produced with a ghostwriter, though proven wrong on many points, remains a classic study.

1818-1844

William Henry Herndon was born on December 25, 1818, in Green County, Kentucky. Shortly after his birth, he and his family moved to Sangamon County, Illinois, where Herndon spent the rest of his life. As he grew, Herndon began attending school and soon found himself at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois starting in 1836. He did not study there long as his father, Archer, removed him from the school in 1837 due to his rising interest in abolitionism which went against his father’s beliefs.

After returning to Springfield, Herndon began working at a store operated by Joshua Speed, the same store that Abraham Lincoln worked and lived at upon moving to the city. It was here that Lincoln and Herndon grew to know each other and was where they developed the relationship that led to their law partnership. It was also around this time, on March 26, 1840, that Herndon entered into his first marriage with a woman named Mary Jane Maxcy, and together they went on to have six children.

When Abraham Lincoln and his second legal partner, Stephen T. Logan began their law firm, Herndon came to work with them through a mentorship role and learned more about the law by reading and studying the practice. Between 1841 and 1844, Herndon worked hard to begin his career as a lawyer, and after those years of hard work, he was admitted to the Illinois Bar on November 27, 1844. This was a major turning point for Herndon’s life as he began the career that would shape him into a major historical figure in Springfield and Illinois history. 

1844-1865

Not long after obtaining his license to practice law, Herndon and Lincoln formed a partnership and began the process of opening their own law office. This office, formerly located in downtown Springfield on Sixth Street in the Tinsley building, was where the two men began their working relationship. While the two were good friends, there was contention between them at times; more specifically between Herndon and Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd. While this was not detrimental to their working relationship and friendship, it did hinder familial connections between them. Regardless, the two worked together on numerous cases over the span of about sixteen years and made a major name for themselves. 

After Lincoln left for the Presidency in 1861, Herndon worked alongside other lawyers in an attempt to keep their practice afloat until he returned, which tragically never happened. The first was with a lawyer named Charles S. Zane, whom he began working with in July 1861. Their partnership lasted until around 1868, when Zane decided to go his own way and start his own practice. It was also during the summer of 1861, when Herndon’s first wife, Mary Maxcy, passed away, and it was not long before he looked to remarry. While Herndon grieved the loss of his first wife, he knew that being a father to six children was not enough for them and that they needed a mother who could love and care for them as well. In the following year, 1862, he married Anna Miles, a woman from Petersburg, Illinois, and together they had four children, adding to the six he had with Mary.

In terms of politics, Herndon leaned heavily towards the Republican party at the time of its creation in the late 1850s. He went on to fully support the party and the belief that enslavement should be abolished in the United States. Outside of politics and the law, he also worked numerous jobs for both the state and city governments such as the State Bank Commissioner under several governors and as Mayor of Springfield. In these years, Herndon was more of a success than he ended up being for the rest of his life, both politically and through his law practice.

1865-1891

After the death of Abraham Lincoln, Herndon tasked himself with compiling histories and stories of his former law partner’s life to eventually put into a biography. However, this was not an easy task, and it would take him a good part of the next twenty years of his life to do this. In the meantime, he did provide several lectures about Lincoln in the years following his death based on memories he had and research he had conducted. Some of the topics he covered were controversial, such as the idea of Ann Rutledge being Lincoln’s true love or the troubled courtship between Lincoln and Mary Todd. Regardless of controversy, his work in the early days of oral history has helped Lincoln scholars to better research and understand the President on a more personal level and without it, the field of “Lincoln” history would not be where it is today. 

When he was not working on his Lincoln research and lectures, he went back to his work as a lawyer for several more years after Lincoln’s death. After his partnership with Charles Zane ended in 1868, Herndon continued with another up-and-coming lawyer, Alfred Orendorff. The two worked together until the early 1870s when Herndon decided to remove himself from the law profession. After leaving his practice, Herndon’s life grew increasingly difficult, and his debts began to accrue. He tried his hand at agriculture and farming but ultimately failed at it while continuing to live a life he could not afford, leaving him with little money to support himself and his family. With little left to lose, Herndon turned to a young man, Jesse William Weik, in the early 1880s to help with one last effort to have his biography on Lincoln’s life published. 

In 1888, in association with Weik, they published their work on Lincoln’s life entitled Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life. While some at the time seemed to consider it an important book in telling Lincoln’s story, there were major objections by Robert Todd Lincoln and many other critics which ultimately led to little royalties for Herndon and his estate. By 1891, Herndon contracted the influenza virus alongside his son William, who also had pneumonia, and the two passed from their illnesses on the same day, March 18, 1891. William Henry Herndon is buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois with his wife Anna.

Sources Used:

- David Herbert Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1948).

- “Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices,” Illinois Department of Natural Resources Historic Preservation Division, accessed June 22, 2023, https://dnrhistoric.illinois.gov/experience/sites/central/lincoln-herndon.html.

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