Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, were blessed with four sons. However, their family life was marked with turbulence and tragedy, as out of their four children, only one was to survive past his teenage years. He was nicknamed Tad by his father because he wiggled like a tadpole as an infant. He was born with cleft lip and palate causing him to have speech defect during his life. One young friend of the Lincoln family in Springfield, Joseph R. Kent, recalled “that Bob, the elder and Tad the younger, were Mama boys. They neither one had the slightest personal appearance or deliberate easy manner of Mr. Lincoln. They both resembled their mother in looks and actions. Lincoln’s mother, sister and three of his sons died young. Losing the boys crushed Lincoln and Mary, who also lost two half-brothers and a brother-in-law during the Civil War. Lincoln's successive duties as legislator, congressman, and president often made him an absentee parent, but he and his wife Mary Todd were by all accounts loving and affectionate toward their children. Tad is a nickname, short for the word “tadpole.” When Tad was young, Abraham thought that Tad’s head looked very large on his small body, like that of a tadpole. According to a close friend of Robert’s, he frequently said that he was known only as the son of Abraham Lincoln and that nobody really wanted him to be secretary of war or ambassador to Great Britain because all they really wanted was the son of Abraham Lincoln to fill those positions. During the time his father was alive, Tad was impulsive and unrestrained, and did not attend school. John Hay wrote that the boy's numerous tutors in the White House usually quit in frustration. Family played an important role in the Lincoln White House. Mr. Lincoln was devoted to his wife and three sons – a fourth son had died over a decade earlier. There was a large gap between Robert, who was 17 when his father entered the White House, and the much younger Willie (10) and Tad (7). We know of very little written material addressing the clothing of the Lincoln children. We have seen letters from Mrs. Lincoln to the president while on her shopping expeditions to New York.