Robert Smith Todd

Robert Smith Todd (February 25, 1791 – July 17, 1849) was an American lawyer, soldier, banker, businessman and politician. He was the father of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Early life Todd was born on February 25, 1791, in Lexington, a year before Kentucky became a state. He was the third of six sons born to Gen. Levi Todd (1756–1807) and Jane (née Briggs) Todd (1761–1800). A year after his mother's death in 1800, his father remarried to Jane Holmes. Among the eleven children his father had between his two wives, was sister Jane Todd, who married congressman Daniel Breck. A source of much family pride, his father fought in the American Revolutionary War under the command of Brigadier General George Rogers Clark. After the War, his father and his uncles, John and Robert Todd, helped found present-day Lexington and became leading landowners and prominent statesmen in the state of Kentucky prior to its admission into the United States in 1792. Through his brother, Dr. John Todd, he was the uncle of U.S. Representative and Union General John Blair Smith Todd. When only fourteen years old, Todd began attending Transylvania College in Lexington, graduating four years later when he was eighteen.