By Mark Rhoads
Herbert Walton Rutledge was president of the Illinois State Society of Washington, DC from 1919 to 1923. In 1922, Rutledge was also elected president of the association of all state societies in Washington, DC then called the "National Council of State Societies" or sometimes called the All States Society or the Pan States Society. That association has continued in existence every year since 1919 under different names. Since 1968, the present name has been in use which is the "National Conference of State Societies." Mr. Rutledge came to Washington from Alton, Illinois in 1909 to work for the Bureau of Crop and Livestock Estimates. According to his decendants, Herbert was related to the family of Anne Rutledge who might have been engaged to marry Abraham Lincoln when she was a resident of Salem, Illinois. Miss Rutledge died in 1835. If the family story is correct, the Illinois poet Edgar Lee Masters wrote this of Herbert's relative in the Spoon River Anthology:
''I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union,
But through separation''
Edgar Lee Masters (1869-1950), U.S. poet. Anne Rutledge (Spoon River Anthology) (l. 7-10). . . Oxford Book of American Verse,
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