History comes alive through Grant, Lincoln at MSU
Former Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams vividly remembers when his fascination with President Abraham Lincoln began.
He was 11 years old and in sixth grade. It was a painting of Lincoln that first sparked his curiosity in the 16th president and he told the Starkville Daily News about how sitting under that painting in grade school would one day culminate in his gift to Mississippi State University of the largest collection of Lincoln memorabilia and artifacts in existence.
“The face fascinated me, the wear on it, the pressure and the stress and years later I learned the printmaker took the face from a Brady photograph, but he stuck it on the body of John Calhoun, who was the big secessionist of the pre-Civil War who thought the South had a right to leave the Union,” Williams said.
Years later, Frank Williams and his wife Virginia would be the primary benefactors for the Frank and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana, featuring 17,000 priceless artifacts and 12,000 books included in the Williams Collection.
The newest exhibit is part of the $10 million expansion at the Mitchell Memorial Library on the MSU campus and will be available in tandem with the innovative new 21,000-square-foot home of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library on the building's fourth floor.
While the Lincolniana exhibit features more tangible items from Lincoln's life and research - including a wooden desk used by Lincoln at a clerk's office in Petersburg, Illinois - the Grant Presidential Library features interactive exhibits geared toward promoting an interest in the nation's 18th president.
After becoming enamored with the Lincoln painting in his grade school, Williams first used his lunch money - 25 cents a day - to purchase used paperback books on Lincoln.
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