Steven Lee Carson, Historian And Authority on Lincoln. 66, Washington Post

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/06/AR2009040603424.html

STEVEN LEE CARSON, 66

Historian Was Authority on Lincoln

Steven Lee Carson, 66, a former archivist and editor who became a historian
and lecturer on presidential history, notably as an authority on the life of
President Abraham Lincoln, died March 27, 2009, at his home in Silver Spring
after a heart attack.

During the past few years, he was a presidential historian at the Woodrow
Wilson House. He spent his early career at the National Archives as well as
writing for and editing the Manuscript Society News and other publications
aimed at librarians, archivists and curators.

He wrote a play about Robert Todd Lincoln, the only child of Abraham and
Mary Todd Lincoln to live into adulthood. The play was staged in the
mid-1980s at Ford's Theatre.

Mr. Carson chaired a conference on presidential children as well as a
National Press Club conference on covering White House families. He was a
past president of the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, a
historical society, and a board member of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial
Commission. Over the years, he led tours of Washington's historical
landmarks.

Mr. Carson was a New York native and as a young man attended with his mother
meetings of the Civil War Round Table there. He was an American history
graduate of New York University, where he was granted a Ford Foundation
fellowship. He received a master's degree in American history from Johns
Hopkins University, where he was awarded another fellowship.

His wife, Yvonne D. Carson, died in the mid-1970s.

Survivors include his mother, Mattie Carson of New York; and a brother.

--

Adam Bernstein