Author finds possible Lincoln letter

Elliot?s discovery was a court document believed to have been written by Abraham Lincoln in 1853 to his father-in-law?s law firm in Lexington concerning a disputed $472.54 debt.

?My hands were kind of shaking,? said Elliot, an author from Bardstown who writes about Kentucky history.

The three-page letter had been in a box in a vault at the Kentucky Department of Library and Archives in Frankfort for almost two decades.

The library was making arrangements to copy the document and was trying to verify the authenticity of the handwriting and signature, said Tim Tingle, a library supervisor who processed the collection.

The document disputes allegations that Lincoln owed the law firm money after he did some debt collection work for it.

?This case upset Lincoln a great deal,? said Thomas Schwartz, a researcher with the Illinois State Historian office. ?It questioned his integrity and honesty. Those things were very important to him.?

Elliot and Tingle said the handwriting and signatures appear to be Lincoln?s and his name appears multiple times in the document, which is notarized ?Vermillion County, Ill.,? in May 1853. At the time of the lawsuit, Lincoln lived in Illinois.