420 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1952 



recent recompilations and reanalyses he has continued almost literally 

 to grow in stature? And in the case of his sculptures, the figure in 

 the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, for example, is truly heroic, 

 being, although seated, 19 feet from the top of the head to the sole 

 of the boot. 



There are very few measurements made during Lincoln's lifetime 

 that help to bring these soaring concepts of his size nearer to reality 

 or to give perspective on the man himself in his population milieu. 

 There is, of course, his own recollection of height and weight : 6 feet 

 4 inches and 180 pounds, respectively. Then there is a chiropodist's 

 record of his foot size. And some idea of his head size has been 

 gained from hats. That is about all. 



The lack of life measurements is somewhat offset, fortunately, by 

 the existence of other records of Lincoln's physique that as such 

 have been largely overlooked. I refer to the casts of his face and 

 hands made in life by the sculptors Leonard W. Volk and Clark Mills. 

 Since probably the best copies from the original molds are preserved in 

 the United States National Museum, I was urged by Dr. Milton H. 

 Shutes, a Lincoln scholar, to study them from the standpoint of phys- 

 ical anthropolgy. This paper is the result. 1 However, in setting about 

 this task I found that I needed to know something about the history 

 of the casts themselves. Not only is their story interesting, but it is 

 important to the understanding of the use I have made of them. 

 This is my reason for now taking the reader back in time and intro- 

 ducing him directly to the principals involved. 



LINCOLN AND VOLK 



"Mr. Volk, I have never sat before to sculptor or painter — only for 

 daguerreotypes and photographs. What shall I do?" 



With this modest but forthright statement, Volk later (1881) re- 

 called, Lincoln covered his uncertainty as he seated himself in the 

 model's chair that Friday morning early in April 1860, the year of the 

 51-year-old Lincoln's nomination and election to the Presidency. 



Volk was becoming well known as a sculptor. He had been wanting 

 to make a bust of Lincoln ever since he had met him 2 years before, 

 during the Lincoln-Douglas senatorial contest, when he had been 

 working on a likeness of Douglas. Something in Lincoln's appearance 

 at that time undoubtedly fascinated Volk as it was later to fascinate 



1 Dr. Shutes brought this problem to my attention during his visit to Washington in the 

 summer of 1950. My manuscript was finished in November 1952. In the meantime, Dr. 

 H. L. Shapiro, of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, had become In- 

 terested in the same subject and had agreed to supply an article along much the same lines 

 for the February 1953 issue of Natural History. When, in December 1952, he began to 

 write, he learned of my completed manuscript and graciously curtailed the scope of his 

 article (see bibliography). 



