Eddy was the second son of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln. He was named after Lincoln's friend Edward Dickinson Baker. Both his mother and father spelled his name "Eddy" the National Park Service uses "Eddie".Eddie died a month before his fourth birthday. Although census records list "chronic consumption" (tuberculosis) as the cause of death, it has been suggested that Eddie died of medullary thyroid cancer.given that: (a) "consumption" was a term then applied to many wasting diseases, (b) cancer is a wasting disease, (c) his father and two of his brothers had several features compatible with the genetic cancer syndrome multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2b (MEN2B), (d) Eddie's thick, asymmetric lower lip is a sign of MEN2B, and (e) 100% of persons with MEN2B develop medullary thyroid cancer, sometimes as early as the neonatal period. Eddie's body was buried at Hutchinson's Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois.