Booth Escape Tour

[KateH.]

All of them are great.

(05-01-2016 05:36 PM)PaigeBooth Wrote:  

(05-01-2016 05:21 PM)KateH. Wrote:  Dave and I stayed at Belle Grove for New Years and attended their murder mystery party. It was a great experience. The owners are wonderful and they host tons of fun events throughout the year like Titanic tea and "Clue" nights. May 14th and 15th will be their Civil War weekend.

Hi Kate,

Dave mentioned to us that you had stayed at Belle Grove. We are going to plan a visit there and stay a few nights. Which room would you recommend is the best?

[L Verge]

(05-01-2016 10:39 AM)PaigeBooth Wrote:  We all had such a great time on the Booth Escape Tour yesterday. It was truly a wonderful day, and I really enjoyed spending so much time talking with Michael Kauffman. We shared a great deal of information together. He is such an incredible historian and shared so much with me. A true delight!

Here is a picture of us during the tour:

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Here is another picture. We had a great time talking outside the museum.

Talk about feeling old, Paige, Mike was about your age when I first met him!

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(05-01-2016 11:47 AM)PaigeBooth Wrote:  

(05-01-2016 11:26 AM)LincolnMan Wrote:  Is the Marker where the Garrett's lived in place?

Hi Bill,

Yes, the marker is in place, we drove past it yesterday during the tour. The property, however, is still prohibited. In fact, they have chains around the property now.

I have been on leave this past week, but received a call from a staff member who had just tried to handle an angry gentleman who called to complain about the new marker at the Garrett Farm. It seems that he has passed that marker many times over the years and does not appreciate the fact that the wording - especially the title -- has been changed on the new sign.

Instead of simply "John Wilkes Booth," as it appeared before, the new title is "Assassin's End." He had called the State of Virginia to complain, and they flipped him to Surratt House. We did pay for the new sign when Virginia would not, and Dave and Kate worked with the state's historic signage office to compose the new text, but final editing and approval was left up to those government officials. Another case of passing the buck (or the blame) to someone else, I guess...

[KateH.]

"John Wilkes Booth" did what? Ate cake? I guess it would have taken too much effort for the complainer to actually spend half a minute reading the sign and learning something. Oh well, no matter where you go there is always one.

[L Verge]

(05-01-2016 07:54 PM)KateH. Wrote:  "John Wilkes Booth" did what? Ate cake? I guess it would have taken too much effort for the complainer to actually spend half a minute reading the sign and learning something. Oh well, no matter where you go there is always one.

Trust me. After forty years in the history museum field, I've found many more than just one.

I am always being asked when I am going to write a book. If I ever do, it will not be on the Lincoln assassination; it will be a narrative on the wide variety of people that you have to deal with on at least a weekly basis -- from being sued for your opinion, having some people try to get you fired for something you did not start, for trying to tell facts to refute weak theories, surviving a bomb threat, protecting volunteers by calming down a "strange" customer and calling police (while your staff all hide in an upstairs bathroom), and I could go on.

And then there will be chapters on the wonderful people I have met, have learned from, and whom I call my friends because of my love for history in general and the Lincoln assassination field in particular. You choose your battles, roll with the tide, calm down and politely deal with the angry man and move on. There will be a new experience tomorrow.

[Thomas Kearney]

(05-01-2016 05:53 PM)KateH. Wrote:  All of them are great.

(05-01-2016 05:36 PM)PaigeBooth Wrote:  

(05-01-2016 05:21 PM)KateH. Wrote:  Dave and I stayed at Belle Grove for New Years and attended their murder mystery party. It was a great experience. The owners are wonderful and they host tons of fun events throughout the year like Titanic tea and "Clue" nights. May 14th and 15th will be their Civil War weekend.

Hi Kate,

Dave mentioned to us that you had stayed at Belle Grove. We are going to plan a visit there and stay a few nights. Which room would you recommend is the best?

the bed my group saw was made of memory foam. Not what they had in 1865!

[Gene C]

(05-02-2016 04:33 PM)Thomas Kearney Wrote:  the bed my group saw was made of memory foam. Not what they had in 1865!

They had memory corn husk back then. Sleep on it one night and you'll remember it.