List of Ford's Theatre Attendees

[Linda Anderson]

Joseph K. Sterling, a friend of the Stanton family from Ohio, claimed in an article in the April 14, 1918 Evening Star that he went to the Falstaff House on 10th St. (which was opposite Ford's Theatre) where he boarded "that fatal night."

"Albert Daggett, then a clerk in the State Department, afterward sheriff of Brooklyn, N.Y., was standing at the door when I entered the hotel. Soon I heard him shout: 'Boys, there's a fight in the theater.'

"I ran across the street. The doorkeeper of the theater had left his post, and a number of us went in. Every person was standing and many men and women were on chairs. All were wildly excited and were looking toward the stage.

"When I asked a woman in the last row of seats the cause of the commotion, she said: 'Lincoln has been shot, and a man who was flourishing a big knife jumped from the President's box to the stage and ran away.' I struggled forward through the crowded aisle until I could was in the center of the theater, but could get no further.

"Just at that moment an officer of artillery in uniform left the box in which Lincoln and his party had been sitting, and, walking to the front of the stage, announced that the President was dead. It would be impossible for me to describe the confusion that ensued."

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045462/...04,0.138,0

In the newspaper article cited on Joe's list, Albert Daggett describes himself as being in the theatre when Lincoln was shot.

Roger, I think the account of Mrs. Nelson Todd is my favorite account, too, but wasn't Lincoln's box on the right of the theatre facing the stage? She said, "There was a flag draped box on the left for the President, Mrs. Lincoln, Miss Harris and major Rathborne. They sat in the second box."

The next part reminds me of the bit from vaudeville where a not so good performer was unceremoniously yanked off the stage with a curtain hook.

"When Booth's spur caught and threw him to the stage he broke his leg in a terrible way, so that the bone actually protruded through his trousers and smeared the stage with blood. Naturally he couldn't move. Laura Keen leaned over and patted his head. Then to my amazement I saw a rope swing out, evidently thrown by some confederates, lasso him and whisk him into the wings. That was the last time I ever saw John Wilkes Booth."