Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln to Ninian W. Edwards, 15 January 18531
Springfield, Jan^y 15. 1853M^r N. W. Edwards
Please pay N. W Edwards & Co, eighty dollars, which will be in full of interest on your note till 1^st May 1853.2
A. Lincoln

1Abraham Lincoln wrote and signed this letter.

2 No promissory note from Ninian W. Edwards to Lincoln has been located. However, if January 15 was the due date of the annual interest on the loan, and the loan was given at the ten percent per year interest rate that Lincoln typically set for his loans to others, then the original amount of the loan would have been $2,750. It is possible that Edwards credited this $80 interest payment to Lincoln’s account at N. W. Edwards & Company, for Lincoln to use toward future purchases from the store.
It appears that, in January 1861, Edwards gave Lincoln two personal promissory notes totaling $1,587.90 with an interest rate of ten percent per year due from January 16, 1861 onward as well as another two promissory notes from his company—by then renamed Smith, Edwards & Company—for a total of $1,000, also at an interest rate of ten percent per year, due from January 16, 1861 forward. By February 1861, Edwards had repaid him $150, and Lincoln transferred the remaining debt to Robert Irwin.
Harry E. Pratt, The Personal Finances of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield, IL: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1943), 75-76; Promissory Note of Daniel E. Ruckel to Abraham Lincoln; Promissory Note from Thomas C. Cantrall to Abraham Lincoln.