Bowie Knife

[Dave Taylor]

Paige,

Thank you for your kind words. I'm so glad you're enjoying my site and my "John Wilkes Booth in the Woods" series. I just finished the latest video for it today.

It's funny, the thing that made me change from reading to actually researching about the Lincoln assassination was a knife. I'm not a weapon person at all, but while I was reading Betty's wonderful book about Powell I came across the picture she had of Dr. Lattimer's knife. It was a clip point bowie knife with an alligator motif. At the time, it was believed that was the knife Powell used to stab Seward. After Betty's book was published, the Huntington Library in California found a knife in their collection that was owned by Private George Robinson, the nurse who saved Seward's life by fighting off the assassin. That knife is pictured in Swanson and Weinberg's coffee table book "Lincoln's Assassins". Seeing two different knives claiming to be the knife Powell used confused me and I really wanted to rectify the issue. I got up the courage to email the nice folks at the Surratt House Museum and very quickly the wonderful librarian there, Ms. Sandra Walia, sent me a packet of materials. Though Dr. Lattimer attempted to show that his knife was genuine, it quickly became clear that the Huntington knife was the real one.

My research on the Booth knife started in much the same way, with two contradictory photos. Like you, Paige, I visited Ford's and took pictures of everything. That included the knives in the display case. I saw the beautifully etched "Liberty" knife labeled as Booth's knife and trusted it. Why wouldn't I? Ford's is a museum and I'm just some guy with an interest in the assassination.



Then, I stumbled across this older picture of "Booth's Dagger" from the Meserve collection:



Once again, I was faced with two different knives that both claimed to have belonged to Booth. I inquired with the Surratt House and got some more materials, but this time there was no straight forward answer. So I decided to try to figure it out. With a lot of research and the help of many members of this forum, I determined that the knife on display at Ford's is not the knife that was taken from his body at the Garrett farm. I wrote an article on it for the Surratt Courier and was later asked to revise it for an audience of knife collectors and it was published in a publication on knives. At the same time I was doing my research, Wesley Harris, who is writing a book about the weapons of the conspirators, was investigating and came to the same conclusion as I did. The knife on display was not taken from Booth.

Where the "Liberty" knife came from is still a mystery. I have a theory that it was collected as evidence from Mary Surratt's boarding house, but I only have some minor evidence to back that up.

The truth is, up until the 1970's or so, Ford's Theatre had the correct knife on display. Then, for some reason, some employee at the NPS decided to switch it with the "Liberty" knife. The "Liberty" knife has been erroneously displayed as Booth's knife ever since and the real knife is in storage in the NPS Museum Resource Center in Landover, Maryland:



I've convinced several people at Ford's Theatre (both the society and the Park Service) that the knife is incorrect. Unfortunately, there is not enough motivation nor a full time curator at Ford's to fix the error. A new curator is supposed to be hired in the near future, and when that happens I'll try to encourage them to fix their mistake.