Logan Hay was the
third president of the Lincoln Centennial Association,
the forerunner of the present Abraham Lincoln
Association. When John W. Bunn died in 1920, the board
of directors wasted little time in electing Logan Hay as
president. Hay’s grandfather was Stephen Trigg Logan,
Abraham Lincoln’s second law partner. His father was
Milton Hay, who had studied law in the Lincoln/Herndon
law firm. And John Hay, Abraham Lincoln’s personal
secretary, was Logan Hay’s cousin. If these ties to the
Lincoln tradition were not sufficient, Hay was a partner
in the firm of Brown, Hay & Stephens, the successor to
the firm of Stuart & Lincoln.
From 1920 until his
death on June 20, 1942, Hay transformed the Association
from a quiet patriotic group into the organization that
set the standard for excellence in Lincoln research and
publications. It was Logan Hay who raised an endowment
that allowed the Association to hire Paul M. Angle, its
first full-time executive director. The name of the
organization was changed from the Lincoln Centennial
Association to the Abraham Lincoln Association in order
to better reflect the broader purposes and research
interests of the organization. No longer would the
purpose of the Association be merely commemorative.
Rather, a vigorous research agenda was set and a stable
of leading Lincoln scholars was assembled to see it
through to fruition. Under Hay’s leadership, Such
Lincoln classics as Benjamin Thomas’ Lincoln’s New
Salem and Paul Angle’s “Here I Have Lived”: A
History of Lincoln’s Springfield, 1821-1865 were
published under the Association imprint. Both Thomas
and Angle indicated their profound gratitude to Hay for
his careful reading of their manuscripts and thoughtful
suggestions for revisions. Fifty-eight issues of the
Association Bulletins were issued during Hay’s
presidency, as well as the Abraham Lincoln Quarterly,
the Association publication that became the foremost
scholarly journal in the Lincoln field. Logan Hay also
began the research phase that would later culminate in
the publication of Lincoln Day By Day and The
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, two of the
Association’s most significant reference works.
Because of his tremendous contributions to the
Association, Logan Hay’s descendants established the
Logan Hay Medal as the highest
honor bestowed by the Association.
Logan Hay was a
leading member of the Springfield and Illinois bar. He
served as president of the Illinois State Bar
Association in 1920 and was one of six downstate
Illinois lawyers selected as charter members of the
American Law Institute in 1923. His contributions to
other charitable organizations were significant. Among
his leading interests were the Abraham Lincoln Council
of the Boy Scouts of America, the Associated Welfare
Agencies and Springfield Hospital. He served as a
director of both the Illinois National Bank and the
First National Bank of Springfield.
Paul M. Angle
summarized Logan Hay’s love of Lincoln best in the
following eulogy: “In the last seventeen years of his
life, his study of the life of Lincoln, and the
translation of that study, through the Association, into
tangible results, was a major interest. In his leisure
time he read widely, but he was never long away from the
literature of some phase of Lincoln’s career. And there
were few days when he did not devote at least some time
to the affairs of the Association. Visitors to his
office, when informed that he was occupied, often
asked: ‘What is it--law or Lincoln?’ If law, they knew
there was a chance that he would soon be free; if
Lincoln, they were aware that he might be unavailable
for hours.”
