Here in Lexington is the Mary Todd Lincoln House, Mary Todd's girlhood home. This fourteen-room, three-story house was Mary Todd’s girlhood home, and today it is a museum containing period furniture, portraits, and artifacts from the Todd and Lincoln families. The building began life c.
1803–1806 as an inn and tavern called "The Sign of the Green Tree" before Robert Smith Todd purchased it for his family. The Todds moved into the home in 1832; Mary lived here until 1839, when she left for Springfield, Illinois. After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln returned to visit her family in this house.
The museum introduces you to Mary Todd Lincoln’s complex life: the refined upbringing in a wealthy, slave-holding family and her later, more reclusive years as a mourning widow. This house has the special distinction of being the first historic site restored in honor of a First Lady. Operated today by the Kentucky Mansions Preservation Foundation, the house museum opened to the public on June 9, 1977.
Notice that this fourteen-room house holds a special distinction: the first historic site ever restored in honor of a First Lady, opened to the public on June 9, 1977.