Document Type
Finding Aid
Collection Number
MSS-008.005
Publication Date
6-15-2016
Last Revision Date
3-16-2017
Description
As a young man Arthur Lloyd Hayden began collecting everything pertaining to Abraham Lincoln: pictures, books, articles, and memorabilia. In 1938 he started to “cut, separate, cull and arrange” his collection to put into scrapbooks. He joined the Lincoln Group of Boston in October 1938, as well as many other Lincoln-related organizations around the country. Many of his vacations consisted of following the tracks Abraham Lincoln left behind in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and other parts of the country, while collecting anything connected to Lincoln along the way. Hayden gave one presentation to the Lincoln Group in October 1966, entitled “My Lincoln Collection and the Pleasure it has Given Me.”
Hayden was a longtime member of the Lincoln Group of Boston; when late in his life he began to look for a repository to house his collection, fellow members Professors Jordan Fiore and John Myers of Bridgewater State College suggested Bridgewater State's Archives and Special Collections. Hadyen’s collection was brought to the Maxwell Library in 1978 and became the nucleus of the Lincoln Collection that has continued to grow ever since.
This collection is a small part of Hayden’s donated material, and focuses on his papers and correspondence with the Lincoln Group. His vast Lincoln scrapbook collection is treated as a separate collection. His collection of books, pamphlets, and Civil War periodicals make up a portion of the Maxwell Library’s Lincoln Book Collection, Lincoln Pamphlet Collection, and Lincoln Periodical Collection. Many of the items in these collections contain Hayden’s personal bookplate depicting an image of Abraham Lincoln.