What happened to the original casket?

[Houmes]

(04-21-2014 05:10 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  If I am reading this correctly, the original casket no longer exists. Apparently after the caskets were switched the original one was buried under the monument. Then, during a reconstruction of the monument, a steam shovel inadvertently struck the original casket and broke it beyond repair. The casket's handles were given to the Illinois State Historical Library.

Good find, Roger. When the Lattimer collection went up for auction in November of 2008, six coffin handles from the original coffin were sold along with a small piece of cedar wood from the coffin. The handles were from the Herbert Wells Fay collection (Fay was custodian at the Lincoln tomb) and the wood was from the Emmett Fostell collection. Fostell was a prominent vaudevillian who had indirectly acquired the wood from the family of Jesse Dubois, a personal friend of Lincoln.

I had always wondered what happened to the original coffin.