This Boise space has office furniture from Lincoln’s son. How did it end up here?

In a corner of the Ada County Courthouse lobby, a set of Victorian office furniture looks slightly out of place amid the metal detectors and attorneys hurrying to court hearings.

There’s a large desk with a leather top, antique inkwell and carved chair. Next to it sits a library table with three more chairs. A tarnished spittoon rests in a corner, unlikely to hold spit from chewing tobacco anytime soon.

The suite once belonged to Robert Todd Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln, when he was an executive at the Pullman Co., a rail car manufacturer.

How did it end up in Boise?

The story begins in Chicago in the 1890s. Robert Todd Lincoln was the legal counsel for Pullman after serving as secretary of war for Presidents James Garfield and Chester Arthur. When George Pullman, the company founder, died in 1897, Robert Todd Lincoln became the company’s president.

Decades later, Russell McCormac, a Pullman Co. manager, spotted a desk suite at a company repair shop, his daughter-in-law, Ginny McCormac, told the Idaho Statesman in a recent phone interview from her apartment in Portland. The company’s warehouse workers said it had been used by Lincoln, though there wasn’t any documentation, Ginny said.

Russell admired it and when he retired in 1968, as the Pullman Co. was collapsing, the company gave him the furniture.

McCormacs donate Lincoln furniture

In 1975, Russell passed it along to his son, John McCormac, to use as office furniture, his wife, Ginny McCormac, said. John, who died in 2019, was vice president of labor relations for Boise Cascade and a voracious antique collector.

“Everybody liked him terribly,” his wife said. “In fact, he was the only Boise Cascade executive ever invited to a union picnic.”

The couple later lived in Seattle and Seaside, Oregon, after leaving Boise. It was at the Seattle Book Fair that they met David Leroy, Ginny McCormac said. Leroy is a former Idaho attorney general and lieutenant governor. He’s also a Lincoln buff.

Once he found out about the desk, he was persistent in trying to get it for Ada County, Ginny said, and kept visiting and calling the couple. When they downsized, they didn’t have space for it and neither of their daughters wanted it, so they decided to donate it.

Leroy remembers things a little bit differently. He told the Statesman that John McCormac contacted him to see if he wanted to buy the suite or help them find a home for it.

Either way, the gift made sense because the courthouse had the space, Abraham Lincoln signed the act that created the Idaho territory in 1863 and the McCormacs had been prominent in Boise when they lived here, Leroy said in a recent interview.

It’s unclear whether Robert Todd Lincoln ever visited Idaho, Leroy said, but his father did not.

Ginny McCormac hasn’t been to Boise in a long time and has never seen the furniture in its current location. But she said it’s nice to have it recognized: “It’s in a good place and we’re delighted.”