Your guess: "angels" or "ages?"

[RJNorton]

(10-21-2013 06:31 PM)L Verge Wrote:  This account appears to have O'Beirne on the streets of D.C. while the President lay dying.

Laurie, this is also what I have thought. The reason I am so interested in this topic is that I receive questions about the deathbed through my website, and for 17 years I have been giving out wrong information if O'Beirne were there.

I think my best source has been W. Emerson Reck's A. Lincoln: His Last 24 Hours." The only mention of O'Beirne is in conjunction with Johnson's very brief visit around 1:30 A.M. Reck has a very detailed account of the last few hours prior to the president's death, and he mentions many names being there, but absolutely no mention of O'Beirne.

In looking at the Rubber Room booklet by Harold Holzer and Frank Williams I cannot find a single mention of O'Beirne in any of various deathbed drawings. This includes Chappel's lithograph that includes an incredible 47 people (many of whom were really not there). O'Beirne is not one of the 47.

As I mentioned before Fred Hatch does not include O'Beirne in his list of people at the deathbed.

I would love to see a definitive answer to this so I can correct my files if need be. Was O'Beirne the type of person who would embellish things many years after the fact? I do not know, but I think I would at least like to see evidence that another mourner at the deathbed saw him there. As far as I can tell, that evidence is lacking. For example, Gideon Welles mentions people he saw there in his diary but O'Beirne is not listed.

If Jim Garrett sees this maybe he will know if Ford's Theatre keeps a list of those folks present at the deathbed.