Mary Smith Owens (September 29, 1808 – July 4, 1877^[1]) was an American woman who was future U.S. president Abraham Lincoln's fiancée for a short time, following the 1835 death of Ann Rutledge. To his surprise and mortification, she rejected his reluctant proposal.

She was the daughter of Nathaniel Owens, a prosperous planter who owned a plantation in Green County, Kentucky, United States.^[2] In 1816, she attended Nazareth Academy, a Catholic school.^[3] She later taught at her father's Brush Creek Academy.^[3]

Her sister Elizabeth "Betsey" Abell was a friend of Lincoln's in New Salem, Illinois.^[2] She introduced Lincoln to Mary Owens when Owens came to visit in 1833,^[2] with an eye to playing matchmaker.^[4] After Owens went home, Lincoln said he "would marry Miss Owens if she came a second time to Illinois."^[2]

Whether he was in earnest or merely joking, Owens did return in the fall of 1836, putting Lincoln in an awkward situation.^[2] Owens considered herself engaged to Lincoln, while Lincoln's opinion of her changed upon her arrival.^[4] Her appearance had, in his eyes, deteriorated significantly in the intervening years; in an August 16, 1837, letter to Eliza Browning, he described Owens unflatteringly:

I knew she was over-size, but she now appeared a fair match for Falstaff; I knew she was called an 'old maid,' and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the appelation [sic]; but now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid thinking of my mother; and this, not from withered features, for her skin was too full of fat to permit its contracting in to wrinkles; but from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran in my head, that nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy, and reached her present bulk in less than thirtyfive or forty years; and, in short, I was not all pleased with her.^[5]

In an attempt to get out of his predicament, he wrote letters to Owens in which he presented himself and Springfield (having moved there in April 1837) in as unfavorable a light as he could.^[4]

Doing what was considered the honorable thing, he proposed to her.^[6] To his surprise, she rejected him, again and again, as he tried several times.^[6] Lincoln wrote of his reaction:

I finally was forced to give it up; at which I very unexpectedly found myself mortified almost beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seemed to me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection that I had been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at the same time never doubting that I understood them perfectly, and also that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody else would have, had actually rejected me with all my fancied greatness.^[6]

William Herndon, Lincoln's former law partner and biographer, later tracked Owens down.^[7] She informed him that "Mr. Lincoln was deficient in those little links which make up the great chain of woman's happiness".^[1]

In early 1838, Owens returned to Kentucky.^[1] She married Jesse Vineyard (1808–1862) in 1841.^[1] The couple eventually settled in Weston, Missouri, and had five children. Their sons fought in the American Civil War on the Confederate side.^[1] Jesse Vineyard and his brothers John and Bryce were members of the congregation of the Pleasant Ridge United Baptist Church in Weston, and the trio founded Pleasant Ridge College about a half a mile south of the church.^[8] She died on July 4, 1877, in Weston, Missouri,^[1] and is interred in the church's cemetery.^[8][9] Her tombstone reads:

Abraham Lincoln's Other Mary
Here Lies Mary Owens Vineyard
1808–1877
Who Rejected Abraham Lincoln's Proposal of Marriage in 1837.^[9]

Reynolds Jones was commissioned by the Chicago & Illinois Midland Railway Company to create an oil painting;^[10] it depicts Lincoln sitting on the ground observing Owens arriving in New Salem and walking past him.^[11] A print was used for the company's 1951 calendar.^[10] The painting was acquired by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in 2013.^[11]

She was played by Catherine Burns in the miniseries Lincoln in the 1975 episode "Prairie Lawyer".^[9] In the book Abraham Lincoln and Women in Film, authors Wetta and Novelli wrote that "the scenes in which she appears offer a perceptive interpretation of her relationship with Lincoln."^[9]

The relationship is the subject of the novel Lincoln's Other Mary (1946), by Olive Carruthers. The Time magazine review stated, "she has wound fact into such a mess of taffy prose that there is no tasting the original flavor of the personalities."^[12]

• Transcripts of Lincoln's letters to Owens:
  • letter of December 13, 1836, from Vandalia, Illinois
  • letter of May 7, 1837, from Springfield
  • letter of August 16, 1837, from Springfield
• Mary Smith Owens Vineyard at Find a Grave