Chicago professor honored for compiling music about Lincoln

CHICAGO (AP) - A Chicago music history professor has won an award for his work cataloging all of the music ever written about Abraham Lincoln.

Roosevelt University assistant professor Thomas Kernan started the work with his dissertation for his Ph.D. at the University of Cincinnati. This month the Abraham Lincoln Institute and Abraham Lincoln Association presented Kernan with the $1,000 Hay-Nicolay Dissertation Prize.

The Chicago Tribune reports (http://trib.in/1KldIbe ) that Kernan hopes to create a searchable online database of his work by April 2017.

Experts say that Kernan's work shows that Lincoln's influence has appeared in music for five generations. Kernan says he's logged more than 1,000 pieces of music. Some of them had been lost or never played.

Kernan says his research shows changes in Americans' views of Lincoln over time.

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Information from: Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com