By Mark Rhoads
Chicagoans from the Lincoln Park area who visit London and take a tour of Westminster Abbey just might have a surprise in store for them when they come out the front entrance.
Look to the right and across the street about eighty yards and you will see outside another church in Parliament Square an exact full-size bronze replica of The Standing Lincoln that was first dedicated by Abraham Lincoln II in Lincoln Park in Chicago in 1887 and still stands there today.
The replica in London was made from the same original mold that was produced by the great 19th Century sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens. The president's grandson, Abraham Lincoln II was called "Jack" by his family. Jack dedicated the statue in Lincoln Park when he was only 15. His father Robert Todd Lincoln was asked by President Benjamin Harrison to be the U.S. Ambassador to England in 1889 and his family was living with him in London in 1890 when Jack suddenly died at the age of only 17.
The London statue of Lincoln was dedicated in 1920 by church members of several denominations who admired The Great Emancipator. Robert Todd Lincoln urged the Londoners to use the St. Gaudens prototype rather than another Lincoln statue in Cleveland.
