New Eyewitness Account?

[Steve]

(06-05-2018 05:12 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  I think it's a fascinating interview, and large parts of it seem quite accurate to me. But I still have a few questions:

1. Abraham Lincoln was carried to the Petersen House on a shutter? I think I have read this in some sources but not others.

2. Peanut John was sent to the Dry Tortugas along with Spangler and the others?

3. Ford's Theatre collapsed twice? I knew about the one in 1893, but was there another?

4. Mary Surratt was an angel of mercy?

1. I've seen a few account eyewitness accounts of people who claimed to be at the theatre say that Lincoln was carried out on a shutter, but admittedly they were later accounts. It would've been medically irresponsible, not to mention harder, to move Lincoln without some sort of makeshift stretcher. Even though Leale doesn't mention a stretcher in his account, I think it's something implied without specifically being mentioned.

2 & 4. I have to agree with Susan's assessment that she was confusing Mary Surratt for Mudd. Who knows, maybe she confused Mudd's fate with Burroughs? I wonder why she was so interested in the fate of Peanut John.

3. My guess is that she's remembering the December 1862 fire at Ford's Theatre and the passage of 5 decades has blurred her memory enough to think that it happened after, not before the assassination.

Looking over Springfield newspapers, I figured out when she performed in Springfield and saw the scrap of Keene's dress displayed there. It was in 1907. Here's a 19 Sept. 1907 article in the Daily Illinois Register mentioning her performance: