Lincoln twice ferried

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Lincoln’s body was twice ferried across the Hudson: on April 24, 1865 and on April 25, 1865.

On April 24, 1865 the coffin crossed the river from Jersey City to Desbrosses Street, NYC. I think this crossing is most known. Carl Sandburg wrote: "Chauncey M. Depew, secretary of state for New York, in behalf of the unavoidably absent Governor Reuben E. Fenton, for the Empire State formally received the body from Governor Parker of New Jersey. Ten stalwart sergeants carried the casket to a hearse which moved through street crowds to the ferry house. The paint was fresh on a legend here reading 'George Washington, the Father: Abraham Lincoln, the Saviour, of His Country.' The ferryboat Jersey City moved across the Hudson River, her pilothouse and cabins in scrape, flags at half-mast."

   

Note: red line = procession April 24 to City Hall; blue line = procession April 25 to the Hudson River Railroad depot (en route to Albany).

On April 25, 1865 the coffin crossed the river again, now from East Albany (Rensselaer) to Albany on the ferryboat “New York”. When the funeral train reached East Albany, it was “on the wrong side of the Hudson River”. The coffin crossed the river to Albany on the boat, but the funeral train traveled northward to the main station of Troy. It then used the rail bridge between Troy and Cohoes to cross the Hudson. On the west side of the river, the train travelled back to Albany. It is said that the body of President Lincoln was housed temporarily in the Dearstyne Inn /Hotel, in Bath-on-Hudson, while awaiting ferry transport. Who knows more?

       

Note that the Livingston Avenue Bridge (directly joining the shores of the Hudson at East Albany) did not exist in 1865; it was completed in 1866