Mary Owens

Mary Smith Owens (September 29, 1808 – July 4, 1877 ) 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. To his surprise and mortification, she rejected his reluctant proposal.

Life She was the daughter of Nathaniel Owens, a prosperous planter who owned a plantation in Green County, Kentucky, United States. She later taught at her father's Brush Creek Academy. After Owens went home, Lincoln said he "would marry Miss Owens if she came a second time to Illinois."

Whether he was in earnest or merely joking, Owens did return in the fall of 1836, putting Lincoln in an awkward situation.

In an attempt to get out of his predicament, he wrote letters to Owens in which he presented himself and Springfield (having moved there in April 1837) in as unfavorable a light as he could. To his surprise, she rejected him, again and again, as he tried several times. She informed him that "Mr. Lincoln was deficient in those little links which make up the great chain of woman's happiness".

She died on July 4, 1877, in Weston, Missouri, it depicts Lincoln sitting on the ground observing Owens arriving in New Salem and walking past him. A print was used for the company's 1951 calendar. In the book Abraham Lincoln and Women in Film, authors Wetta and Novelli wrote that "the scenes in which she appears offer a perceptive interpretation of her relationship with Lincoln."