Mary Owens (Abraham Lincoln fiancée)

Mary Smith Owens (September 29, 1808 – July 4, 1877[1]) was an American woman who was future U.S. president Abraham Lincoln's fiancée for a short time, following the 1835 death of Ann Rutledge.

She was the daughter of Nathaniel Owens, a prosperous planter who owned a plantation in Green County, Kentucky, United States.

[4] Her appearance had, in his eyes, deteriorated significantly in the intervening years; in an August 16, 1837, letter to Eliza Browning, he described Owens unflatteringly: I knew she was over-size, but she now appeared a fair match for Falstaff; I knew she was called an 'old maid,' and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the appelation [sic]; but now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid thinking of my mother; and this, not from withered features, for her skin was too full of fat to permit its contracting in to wrinkles; but from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran in my head, that nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy, and reached her present bulk in less than thirtyfive or forty years; and, in short, I was not all pleased with her.

My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection that I had been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at the same time never doubting that I understood them perfectly, and also that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody else would have, had actually rejected me with all my fancied greatness.

[9] Reynolds Jones was commissioned by the Chicago & Illinois Midland Railway Company to create an oil painting;[10] it depicts Lincoln sitting on the ground observing Owens arriving in New Salem and walking past him.

The Time magazine review stated, "she has wound fact into such a mess of taffy prose that there is no tasting the original flavor of the personalities.