Most valuable missing assassination relic

[L Verge]

Several days ago, I was contacted by the Chief of the Division of Medicine and Science at the Museum of American History (Smithsonian Institution) wanting information on the pair of field glasses that we have on display at Surratt House. Dave Taylor mentioned the real missing glasses in a previous post on this thread, and of course we know that Mrs. Surratt got into a lot of trouble by bringing those glasses to John Lloyd in the late-afternoon of April 14.

Evidently, the Smithsonian has quite a collection on the history of opera/field glasses/binoculars. No one appears to know what happened to Booth's pair after they were part of the testimony of Luther Byron Baker at the 1867 trial of John Surratt. From what some research that has been done on them seems to indicate, however, is that the pair we exhibit is probably identical. Here's some of the information from our files:

They came to us as a donation from the late John C. Brennan of Laurel, Maryland, in 1985. He had purchased them several years earlier from a Steve Bunker, who ran an antique store on Fells Point in Baltimore that specialized in antique naval goods. Upon research, he and Mr. Bunker concluded that they matched exactly the description of those involved in the Lincoln assassination story.

“These particular binoculars, near the conventional larger lenses, had a turnscrew bearing the markings FIELD, MARINE, and THEATRE that revolved another set of bulbous lenses within the device for better focusing.”

Mr. Brennan also compared “our” glasses to a pair owned by another acquaintance, W.F. Mathers of Glen Burnie, Maryland. They had been purchased by him from a Civil War dealer who knew nothing about them except that they had turned up for sale in Maryland. Mr. Mathers provided a drawing of critical points on his pair. In citations for an ensuing article on the Booth binoculars that Mr. Brennan did for our museum’s newsletter, the following description is given:

“They bear the imprint of “Colmont Ft..Paris” and, with the bottom 1 ¾ inch sunshades extended, they measure about nine inches in length (as do ours). At first glance, they appear to be the ordinary pre-World War II glasses, with twin barrels that move up and down within slightly larger leather-covered casings at the touch of a knurled wheel. But on the right of the Mathers glasses, close under the eyepieces that ordinarily press against the cheekbones of a user, one find a serrated brass wheel the size of a collar button. When turned, this wheel rotates a spindle transfixing the binoculars that holds, within the tubes, three matching minuscule matching sets of lenses. When the brass wheel is turned, these tiny “contact lenses” almost brush against the rims of the open holes in the eyepieces. The flattened-out middle portion of the spindle that lightly rests on the ridge of a user’s nose, on its four faces shows the words MARINE, THEATRE, FIELD, and (blank). The revolving lenses, delicately grasped by the ribs of metal spheres within the two tubes, correspond with the fixed lenses that cap the conventional binoculars or opera glasses. To clean the Mathers lenses, one unscrews and removes the eyepieces and lifts the dumbbell-shaped arrangement out of slots cut just below the eyepiece threads on the barrel.”

I should add that both the Mathers pair and the ones we have on display measure nine inches in height. I have no idea what happened to Mr. Mathers’s field glasses. He may still be alive and may still have them - but, thirty years have gone by.

I double-checked the history of Booth's field glasses from when they were left at the Garretts. Lucinda Holloway (Garrett’s sister-in-law) found them on a bookcase and took them to Mr. Garrett to see what to do with them. His reply was, “Take them out of my sight.” Thinking that the glasses were too valuable to be destroyed, Lucinda gave them to her brother to take to their mother’s house. When Lt. Luther Byron Baker came back later, Garrett’s son (Jack) took him to that home (about nine miles away) to retrieve them. Miss Holloway recounted this in a little booklet that is in the Confederate Museum in Richmond. Francis Wilson reproduced it in his 1929 book, John Wilkes Booth.

Now, commit this information to memory and be on the look-out for old field glasses whenever you visit a likely antique shop or flea market. If there is any provenance that mentions Luther Byron Baker, snap them up and call me...