Riggs Bank was the most important financial institution in Washington for years. Now that it has been purchased by PNC, the old records in one vault are being scrutinized -- as it contains the financial records of many well-known historical figures.

On Aug. 28, 1861, a month after the Union Army's disastrous defeat at the first Battle of Bull Run, President Abraham Lincoln sat down and wrote out a Riggs Bank check for $3 to "Mr. Johns (a sick man)."

It is not known who Johns was, where Lincoln encountered him or what prompted the beleaguered president to pause amid the opening weeks of the Civil War to give him a donation.

It is but a tantalizing shard of local history, one of the thousands that reside not in the National Archives or Library of Congress but behind the thick steel door of a 40-year-old basement bank vault in downtown Washington, where the question has become: What to do with them?

The Lincoln check is among a trove of documents gathered over the decades by Washington's venerable and now-defunct Riggs Bank -- which, along with its antecedents, had customers ranging from Davy Crockett to President George H.W. Bush.

The collection includes letters, notes and checks written by, among others, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Brigham Young and Gen. John Pershing.

Now, Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank, which took over Riggs on May 13, 2005, is in the midst of a project to gather and inventory the artifacts, which include shelves of crumbling ledgers that go back a century and a half.

John Tydings, director of the PNC-Riggs Bank archives project, said last week that PNC has never acquired such a collection. PNC "recognized the need to address this in a much more sensitive way because of the connection of these records to the history of this country, as well as the history of the bank and the history of the city," he said.

What insights into the personalities and habits of historical figures might we get? What scandals might be revealed -- or laid to rest? I envy the historian put in charge of this project -- Mary Beth Corrigan -- who will have the honor and pleasure of cataloging and preserving the precious documents.

Of particular interest to me? The Lincoln account, for it seems that the president was in the habit of wandering the streets of Washington, and he would often engage in personal works of charity as he did so, writing checks like the one mentioned earlier when he was particularly moved.

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