Stupid question?

[loetar44]

We have at least “one trunk more”.

On March 14, 1865 Booth asked John Matthews to deliver a trunk containing “delicacies” to a friend in Baltimore. This trunk was later sent to southern Maryland. George S. Bryan in “The Great American Myth, The True Story of Lincoln’s Murder” (1940) writes: “Some days before the play ["Still Waters"] was given, Matthews took with him to Baltimore, at Booth's request, a trunk to be delivered to "a gentleman." This trunk was filled, according to Matthews, with provisions, toilet articles, and various comforts for Lincoln on the journey to the Confederate lines.”

Speaking about Matthews there are conflicting stories about his whereabouts after Booth shot Lincoln. Where did he burn the letter Booth gave him earlier that day?

Tom Bogar writes in his “Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination” that Mathews was picked up on Friday April 21, and that his L STREET BOARDINGHOUSE room was searched, but nothing was discovered to tie him to the crime.” This is the ONLY reference to L-Street.

George Bryan writes in “The Great American Myth”: “Matthews, who seems to have been thoroughly terrified by what had happened, went straight to his room in the PETERSEN HOUSE and locked the door. He expected that Ford's would be burned. When he removed his coat, the letter Booth had handed him dropped to the floor. He opened and read it.

Kathryn Canavan writes in “Lincoln’s Final Hours”: “Mathews lived upstairs at PETERSEN’S BOARDINGHOUSE, the house directly across the street from Ford’s Theatre where President Lincoln was taken after he was shot. A few weeks before, Mathews rented the downstairs room where President Lincoln died. Booth sometimes visited him there, stretching out on the bed, laughing and telling stories, his pipe hooked in his mouth.” This is correct but she also writes: “Mathews and other Ford’s actors made for the exits to avoid police. Mathews retreated to his boardinghouse across the street , the same house where the president lay dying [= PETERSON HOUSE]. He walked past the armed guards and climbed straight upstairs to his room totally unaware that Booth’s letter was about to fall out of his overcoat pocket”.

And what about this? Is it true (as Katryn Canavan writes) that John Mathews almost got himself hanged twice on assassination night? Two crowds tried to hang him later that night solely because he knew Booth. He escaped the first. The second time, the rope was already looped around his neck when some soldiers rescued him. Never heard that story.