After Jack Lincoln's death in England in 1890, the Lincolns decided three years later to return to America. "...at all events, they, with at least one of the daughters [namely, Jessie], returned to this country at the end of the year [1893?] and went to Mount Pleasant, Iowa, where Mrs. Robert Lincoln's father was still living. (Lincoln's Sons, p. 309)

"Mary (Mamie), Jack, and Jessie Lincoln were bright, natural, unpretentious children well liked by the people of the town." (Lincoln's Sons, p. 305)

"Mary and Jessie Lincoln were piano students in the summer session of Iowa Wesleyan in 1886, and Mary became a member of the Mount Pleasant Chapter A of the P.E.O. Sisterhood on Sept. 17, 1884 (one month before her 15th birthday); Jessie was initiated into the same organization on Dec. 31, 1895 (almost two months after her 20th birthday). ["History of P.E.O. in Iowa (State P.E.O. Chapter, 1952), 194; Mary Lincoln was Roll No. 225; Jessie Lincoln was Roll No. 361.] (p. 416, "Jessie Harlan Lincoln in Iowa," by Dr. Louis A. Haselmayer, Annals of Iowa, Des Moines, IA, Fall 1968)

"The 'Chicago Tribune', on the same page where it had a long article on his election to this presidency, carried an account of his daughter Jessie's elopement with an attractive young athlete, Warren Beckwith, a member of the football team at Mount Pleasant, Iowa. It was a marriage which Robert and his wife had bitterly opposed, and they had thought the attachment broken off. On November 10, 1897 (this was the day before his election), word of the elopement had come to them at their home, and dumbfounded they had hurried to Jessie's room, only to find her gone. She had been married several hours before." (Lincoln's Sons, p. 333)

Letters that Robert Lincoln wrote to his Aunt Emilie Todd Helm and her daughter Katherine "reveal Robert the father anxious about 'our girl Jessie,' who was approaching her second confinement [during pregnancy]: 'She had such a bad time before. . . .' (Lincoln's Sons, p. 330)

"a society belle" in college

In an article titled "Grid Player, Sweetheart Elope": Jason Randall was born & raised in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. A boyhood friend of his, F. M. Lafforge, wrote a letter on March 12, 1957 which is quoted by the unnamed author of this article: "In 1940 and many years thereafter I made a trip to the West Coast. I found Warren living in La Jolla, and I often stopped to visit him. On one visit (1948) Warren explained that he and Jessie had separated in 1907, or 10 years after their marriage. This subject was brought up by the news that Jessie had just died in Manchester, Vt., on the old Robert Lincoln summer homestead. In the conversation, it developed that, due to ill-health, Jessie Lincoln in her later years had grown to a weight of 400 pounds before her death."

In an undated article (circa 1940 - between Nov 6, 1939 & June 8, 1940) titled "Finds Traits of Lincoln in Scions," published in a Cleveland (state ?) newspaper, her address is given as 2908 North Street, Washington.