Paging Carrie Bean

[Dave Taylor]

I have found myself on a research tangent that I need some help on. It started with me finding an old article from a woman in Denver who claimed that John Wilkes Booth gave her grandmother a photograph of himself at the National Hotel on the morning of Lincoln's assassination. She gave her grandmother's name as Cynthia Allen Brooks and that JWB saw her at breakfast at the National on April 14th. It's an interesting claim I was actual able to find some members of the family actually living at the National Hotel in 1870, so there may be a grain a truth in it. But that article was just a catalyst for my big research question.

You see, I knew there was another story about John Wilkes Booth's breakfast at the National Hotel on the morning of Lincoln's assassination. According to an article that George Alfred Townsend (GATH) wrote on April 29, 1865, JWB shared his morning meal with a Miss Carrie Bean:

"On the morning of the murder, Booth breakfasted with Miss Carrie Bean, the daughter of a merchant, and a very respectable young lady, at the National Hall. He arose from the table at, say eleven o'clock. During the breakfast, those who watched him say that he was lively, piquant and self-possessed as ever in his life."

Now we've talked about Carrie Bean before on this forum. Jenny had a great post about her back in in 2015. She pointed out the oddness of calling Carrie Bean a "young lady" because the Carrie Bean we all know was a widowed mother of 3 at the time of the assassination.

Jenny also quotes from John T. Ford, who wrote the following about the breakfast:
"On the morning of April 14, 1865, it was fully 11 A.M. when John Wilkes Booth came from his chamber and entered the breakfast-room at the National Hotel, Washington. He was the last man at breakfast that day; one lady only (Miss Carrie Bean) was in the room, finishing her morning meal. She knew him and responded to his bow of recognition."

While Carrie Bean's FindaGrave page states that this quote from John T. Ford was from an interview he did in 1865, that is not where this quote comes from. Rather, this is from an article Ford composed in The North American Review in 1889.

Now I've been to Carrie Bean's grave at Congressional Cemetery. She later married a man named John Russell but is buried next to her first husband, William Bean, and her parents in Congressional.

With this Denver article prodding me, I realized how little support we have that Carrie Bean dined with JWB on the morning of April 14th. It really all comes down to GATH. John T. Ford wasn't even in D.C. on April 14th and his article was clearly influenced by GATH's article which he published later that year as The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. The part about Carrie Bean is repeated in that book.

But so many things don't add up. GATH writes that "Miss" Carrie Bean was a "young lady" and the "daughter of a merchant". But none of those descriptors really match our Carrie Bean. I'm not trying to be insulting but I have a hard believing that in the 1860s, a 34 year-old widow with three children would be be considered a "Miss" or "young". Also, Carrie's father was not a merchant. According to his obituary, Thomas Copeland had been a "master machinist and engineer of the U.S. Navy Yard". In addition, Copeland had died in 1856. GATH's inclusion of him makes it seem like he was still alive. Also why was Carrie Bean at the National Hotel? She was a D.C. resident, so why stay at a hotel?

The more I thought about it, the more none of it made sense. GATH is so untrustworthy on a lot of stuff, but it still seemed odd to me that he would completely make up Carrie Bean's breakfast with JWB out of whole cloth.

Then I saw, Carrie Bean's FindaGrave page which has a couple pictures from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper from March 23, 1861. Jenny included these pictures in her 2015 post, but the image links have since failed. Here is a link to the issue of Frank Leslie's that I'm referring to: https://archive.org/details/sim_leslies-...ew=theater

The cover image shows the fashion of several ladies who attended the inaugural ball of President Lincoln in 1861. The left most woman on the top row is labeled "Miss Carrie Bean". This drawing is the same one included in Carrie Bean's FindaGrave page, demonstrating that Carrie was quite the fashionable woman and got invited to the inaugural ball.

But here's the rub, I don't think this is a drawing of Carrie Bean the D.C. resident. If you look at the other named ladies on the cover you see that most just have their names but some say their city. For example there's "Miss White, of Washington" and "Mrs. Frank Smith, of Boston" on the top row with Carrie Bean. "Mrs. Alexander of Washington" and "Mrs. Rice, of Boston" are on the bottom row. Why, didn't Carrie Bean's name say, "of Washington" after it? Well the answer lies inside the pages of the edition. The inaugural ball is discussed inside the paper on page 285. It describes the different fashions of the ladies including the women on the cover. For Carrie Bean, it says, "Miss Bean, of New York, in white tarletan"

None of the descriptors GATH gives for the Carrie Bean that JWB had breakfast with match the Carrie Bean buried at Congressional Cemetery in D.C. But what if that's because we've been looking at the wrong Carrie Bean the whole time? What if this "Miss Carrie Bean" from New York, who attended the 1861 inauguration is the person GATH was referring to? Lincoln's second inauguration was only a month before. Was it possible that Miss Bean returned to D.C. in March of 1865 in order to take part in the festivities once again and just stayed on at the National Hotel for a month? Such long hotel stays were not uncommon at the time. John Wilkes Booth, his fiancée Lucy Hale, and Lucy's family had all been staying at the National Hotel for months before the assassination.

When trying to work backwards I was hoping that the NY Carrie Bean would have a connection to the Lincolns which might explain her presence at the inaugural ball in 1861. In trying various searches, I came across an article about Robert Todd Lincoln's marriage in 1868. Among the description of the different wedding guests is the following:

"Miss Cora [sic] Bean, of New York, was dressed in white French muslin, elegantly embroidered over a purple silk, with amethyst necklace, earrings and bracelets. Her dress was made in the latest and most fashionable style."

I'm not sure if this Cora Bean is the same as the Carrie Bean from the inauguration ball, but the fact that a similarly named woman has turned up at yet another Lincoln function seems promising. However, Jason Emerson, in his book about Robert Lincoln, cites "Miss Cora Bean" as attending but states she was a friend of Mary Harlan, which may complicate things.

So now I'm on the hunt for this New York based Carrie Bean. I want to find out who she was, how old she was in 1865, what connection she might have had to the Lincolns, if she ever stayed at the National Hotel, and if her father was a merchant as stated by GATH. I know we have some great researchers here on the forum and I could use all the eyes I can get to try and find this elusive New York Carrie Bean who may have been the one who dined with John Wilkes Booth on the morning of April 14, 1865.