The dedication on Oct. 15, 1874, of Lincoln's Tomb in Springfield's Oak Ridge Cemetery by the National Lincoln Monument Association (NLMA) had a twist of irony.

The interesting thing about Lincoln lore is that every book written about the 16th president brings new insights and interpretations. Sometimes the depictions of historical moments differ from previous accounts.

The review on this page of Thomas Craughwell's “Stealing Lincoln's Body,” for instance, has the NLMA at odds with Mary Todd Lincoln over the site for the president's final repose.

This dispute would have taken place in the interim between the president's death on April 15, 1865, and the interment at Oak Ridge on May 4. However, a chronology published in 1965 by the Illinois State Historical Library sets the date that the NLMA was organized as May 15 that year.

Further, Dale Carnegie's 1932 work, “The Unknown Lincoln,” has Mary vehement against burial in Springfield despite the entreaties of a committee that hurried to Washington within days of the assassination.

The widow had few friends in the state capital, and three sisters whom she disliked. “I can never go back to Springfield,” she is quoted in a conversation with a dressmaker.

Carnegie reports that Mary would rather have had the president interred in Chicago or under the Capitol in Washington.

When she subsequently consented to Springfield's pleas, a fund was raised to purchase a four-block tract in the downtown Mather Block. A tomb was hastily readied for the arrival of the funeral train on May 3. Mary hit the ceiling when she learned of the location.

She harbored long resentment for the Mather family and refused to let her husband's body “lie for one single night on ground” that they had contaminated. So the remains were hauled to Oak Ridge on the north side and buried there the next day.

That scenario differs from Craughwell's, which has Mary Lincoln resolved from the start that the president would be entombed at Oak Ridge.

Members of the NLMA, in “Stealing Lincoln's Body,” reportedly expressed a preference for the Mather site. At that, the widow threatened to change the location to the National Capitol.

By 1932, when “The Unknown Lincoln” was first published, the body of Abraham Lincoln had been moved 17 times for various reasons until Sept. 26, 1901.

His coffin then was “imbedded in a great ball of steel and solid concrete, six feet beneath the floor of the tomb,” Carnegie writes.

The State Historical Library chronology and Carnegie's book provide dates of the following events in the search for a final resting place.

Dec. 21, 1865 – The body is moved from a public receiving vault to a temporary vault.

Sept. 19, 1871 – It is placed in a crypt in the partially completed tomb.

Oct. 15, 1874 – President Ulysses S. Grant attends the dedication of the tomb, not yet fully completed, by the National Lincoln Monument Association. Former governor Richard J. Oglesby gives the principal address.

Nov. 7, 1876 – Three men saw through a padlock, pry the lid off the sarcophagus and lift the casket halfway out. They escape when Secret Service officers arrive but are later captured in Chicago.

The NLMA hides Lincoln's body for the next two years in an iron coffin in a dark passageway behind the catacombs.

1900-01 – Lincoln's Tomb is rebuilt.

June 17, 1931 – The remodeled tomb is rededicated by President Herbert Hoover.