Gravestone

Quincy Friends

Marker Dedicated for Grave
Of Eliza Caldwell Browning

A memorial stone to mark the grave of Eliza Caldwell Browning – nearly 125 years after her death – was dedicated September 30 at the Woodland Cemetery.

The ceremony was in conjunction with the 200th birthday of Browning, whose friendship with Abraham Lincoln spanned three decades. She was the wife of Orville Hickman Browning, a close political associate of Lincoln.

Eliza Browning was born near Richmond, Kentucky, in October 1807. There is no record of the date. She grew up near Richmond, 25 miles south of Lexington, where she attended an academy for women. In 1836 Eliza married Orville Browning and moved to Quincy, where he practiced law and where she would spend the next 49 years.

Mrs. Browning and Lincoln met when Orville Browning began his first term in the Illinois Senate in Vandalia, the state’s first capitol. The friendship continued in the early years leading to Lincoln’s election to the White House and through his presidency. Significantly, the close relationship was the longest female friendship in Lincoln’s life – to the extent that Eliza stayed at the White House for a week comforting the Lincolns after the death of their son Willie in 1862.

Respected among political leaders of the era for her wisdom as much as her wit, Browning worked in the forefront of community social improvements. She was dedicated to children needing shelter and was a charter member of what became Woodland Home. Two of these children were welcomed into the Browning family. Markers for her two foster children, Emma Lord Skinner and William Shipley, will be dedicated along with a marker for an unnamed stillborn son born April 28, 1843.

The markers were made possible through a donation to the Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County. Iris Nelson, author of the article, “Eliza Caldwell Browning: Lincoln’s Loyal Confidante,” published in the Spring 2006 issue of the Journal of Illinois History, coordinated the project to commemorate Browning’s significant life in early Illinois politics and her important friendship with Abraham Lincoln.

The public can view the gravestones of the Browning family in the family burial plot in Woodland Cemetery’s Block 14, Lots 118 and 119. Woodland is located in the 1000 block of South Fifth Street in Quincy.