author
Osborn H. (Osborn Hamiline) Oldroyd
1842–1930
A Civil War veteran turned devoted Lincoln collector, he spent decades preserving stories, relics, and public memory tied to Abraham Lincoln. His books and museums helped shape how later generations encountered Lincoln’s life and legacy.
1 Audiobook
The Good Old Songs We Used to Sing, '61 to '65
by Osborn H. (Osborn Hamiline) Oldroyd
About the author
Born in Ohio in 1842, Oldroyd served in the Union Army with the 20th Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. He later wrote about that experience in A Soldier's Story of the Siege of Vicksburg, drawing on his wartime diary.
He became best known as a writer, collector, and energetic promoter of Abraham Lincoln’s memory. Archives and library records describe him as an authority on Lincoln who assembled a major collection of Lincoln memorabilia, edited The Lincoln Memorial: Album-Immortelles, and spent years displaying his collection in both the Lincoln Home in Springfield and the Petersen House in Washington, the house where Lincoln died.
Oldroyd died in Washington, D.C., in 1930. Remembered less as a conventional literary figure than as a passionate curator of Lincoln remembrance, he played an important part in preserving material that fed the public’s lasting interest in Lincoln.