#97-03-16
For Release: March 24, 1997
Contact: Peter Bailley

Rodney Davis, Szold Distinguished Service Professor of History at Knox College, will give the 1997 Burkhardt Lecture, "Abraham Lincoln: Son and Father," on Wednesday, April 9, at 4 p.m. in the Common Room, Old Main, at Knox College. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Davis will discuss Lincoln's relationship with his sons in light of Lincoln's own childhood. "By most accounts, Lincoln as a son was rather indifferent to his father, especially so at the time of his father's death," Davis explains. "Lincoln was also well known as an absent and overindulgent father of his own sons."

Davis has taught history and American studies at Knox since 1963 and has written and lectured widely about Abraham Lincoln. He and Douglas Wilson, professor emeritus of English at Knox College, are editing biographical materials about Lincoln originally gathered by William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner in Springfield, Illinois.

The Burkhardt Lecture is funded by an endowment established by Richard W. and Dorothy Johnson Burkhardt, in memory of Mr. Burkhardt's parents, Edgar and Ruth Burkhardt. Richard Burkhardt has served as dean and professor at Ball State University. Dorothy Burkhardt, professor emerita of modern languages at Ball State, is a life trustee of Knox College. Both are 1939 Knox graduates.

The Burkhardt Endowment supports biennial public lectures on historical topics by members of the Knox faculty, as well as faculty development activities in the history department.

Founded in 1837, Knox is an independent, four-year, liberal arts college, located in Galesburg, Illinois, with 1,100 students from 42 states and 33 nations. Knox's "Old Main," a National Historic Landmark, is the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.