New Eyewitness Account?

[RJNorton]

Many thanks to Steve for sending these articles.

Steve writes, "Laurie was definitely right about fake news! I found the original 22 August 1867 Boston Post article for the Mary Lincoln dress blurb, it's from a snarky gossip column entitled "All Sorts of Paragraphs". The column had run an earlier blurb on the story, without mentioning Mary on Aug 10th. I've cropped the Aug. 22 column, so you can see the context/gist of the other blurbs in the column. The Mary Lincoln Laura Keene dress blurb is the last one at the bottom of the crop.

I traced the original story from which all of these news stories are based to the 06 August 1867 edition of the New York Evening Press in an article by a correspondent who described the sights he saw when he visited Springfield. One the places he visited was the old Lincoln home, with the Tiltons letting him look around. The Tiltons explained that the framed piece of the dress had been given to them by Laura Keene when she visited Springfield I've attached a copy of the complete article because it's an interesting read all around and not just about the dress. I checked the local Springfield papers and Keene must have given it to them in early November 1866 when she and her company were performing in Springfield.

I also found a 16 November 1865 article in the Chicago Tribune reprinting an article from two days earlier in the Louisville Press, reporting that Keene had given part of the dress to somebody in Louisville when she had been performing there as well.

I have a book entitled By Square & Compass: Saga of the Lincoln Home by Dr. Wayne C. Temple. I think it's the most detailed history of the Lincoln Home that I have ever seen. There is no mention at all of Laura Keene and her dress. IMO, if there were blood on her dress it was most likely Rathbone's, not Lincoln's. And if this "gift" really happened, what happened to it? Wouldn't it be a gift to the home itself, not the Tilton family? Was it there when Osborn Oldroyd lived there? IMO, Robert Lincoln would have destroyed it if he knew about it.

IMO, if Dr. Temple believed the story, he would have included it in his book on the home.