Yet Another View of the Branson Boarding House

[John Fazio]

(08-26-2015 01:40 PM)BettyO Wrote:  

Quote:What I would really like to get my hands are are Eckert's notes, the ones he made after his talks with Powell. He mentions them, but gives no clue as to where they may be found, if, in fact, they have survived.

John -

You and I both!! It's supposedly known that Eckert died with Alzheimers and before he died, was "walling things up" inside his house....at least that is the story. I do know that his family, in later life was one of the most dysfunctional I've ever read of! If these documents are not in the archives or elsewhere - his still-standing house may or may not hold the clue!

Betty:

Your knowledge of the subject never ceases to amaze me. I rather doubt that Eckert would wall the notes up in his home or anywhere else, even if he was losing his faculties. The greater likelihood, it seems to me (assuming they existed and haven't been discarded by someone who did not realize their value, like millions of other records over the centuries) is that they are in a filing cabinet somewhere, in a file or folder, sandwiched between other papers, waiting for someone to discover them, in the same way that Joan discovered Atzerodt's May 1 confession. I vaguely recall Eckert testifying, either at the Surratt trial or at the Johnson impeachment hearing, that his notes were sketchy and that he had intended to go back, when he had the time, and flesh them out, but that he hadn't found the time to do so (surprise!). That may have been the fact of it or it may have been a convenient way for Eckert to conceal the fact that he either hadn't really taken notes at all or that he had since lost them. He said he did not take notes during the interviews (for obvious reasons), but committed the results of the interviews to paper later. The first part of the satement makes sense, but the second has an odor about it. Why didn't he flesh them out, produce them, write about them later? I believe there is a good possiibility that they will never be found, because, like orders in writing to assassinate, they never existed. I hope I am wrong.

John