Frederick Hill Meserve

Frederick Hill Meserve (1865 to 1962), was a businessman who was a prominent collector of historical photographs and Lincolniana. He was born in Boston, Mass. to William Neal Meserve, a Congregational minister, and Abigail Burnham Hill. Between 1868 and 1876 the American Missionary Society sent the family to California, where William Meserve established a number of churches. The family then returned to the East, where Meserve finished his secondary education. Meserve developed an interest in old photographs whilst collecting illustrations for a book based on his father's Civil War diary. As a result he found several "lost" photographs of Lincoln.