Louis Weichmann

[Pamela]

(09-03-2015 12:50 PM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  It looks as if it is still standing!

https://www.google.com/maps/place/f+stre...0a!6m1!1e1

Awesome Roger and Susan! It has a flag with the letters G and W. Could it be part of George Washington University now? I wonder if Dave feels like reenacting Louis's window pose if they let him in? Maybe my husband will do it.

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Going back to the first post on this thread, I have now read and re-read the file posted by Gene and I feel like I've been tortured on the rack. If there's another masochist reading this thread, go for it if you want to confirm what I'm going to say.

The oft repeated statements in Ewald's articles on Weichmann's life in Anderson, that Louis and his family were basically despised by the community and that Louis never stood with his back to a door, etc, all come from two sources--Pastor Conroy and Joseph Abel. Pastor Conroy arrived in Anderson a few years after Weichmann's death, but received a lot of toxic information about Louis's brother, Pastor Fred Weichmann and Louis from his predecessor, Pastor Mulcahy. None of their stories have been confirmed by any other source, other than, to a degree, the information from Abel, which is very suspect. Joseph Abel liked Weichmann and benefited from his kindness in his business school. Louis gave him free tuition in exchange for office work when he was only 15. Sometime after that, Abel had conversations with Conroy who was the pastor of his church, St Mary's. I'm waiting for Ewald to give me details. In 1943 Conroy submitted an insane sounding report to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for their Lincoln museum, trashing Weichmann, expressing belief in Mary Surratt's innocence (and mentioning her ghost "on the wing") and referencing Abel and a book Louis supposedly wrote called The Pope and the Southern Confederacy.

Joseph Abel wrote a six page article when he was over 80 years old, about his knowledge of Louis Weichmann and the Lincoln assassination, and stuck it in St Mary's church files, where Ewald found it. Ewald admitted that Abel's article, "... is a most confusing document." "Upon reading the entire Abel manuscript it will become immediately apparent that the balance of the document represents Abel's limited understanding of the assassination as he interpreted it through the few secondary sources he may have read. It is readily apparent, also, that this is a most confusing document in that it is difficult to ascertain exactly what Abel had gathered from other sources and what he had actually heard from Weichmann and had read in the latter's manuscript." Ewald then wrote a series of articles for the Surratt Courier that read like a tabloid newspaper. Included is the story of Chris Ritter, a butcher who blew into town one day and announced he was writing a book about Booth's actual escape to South America and other crazy stuff, some of which involved Louis. After a period of time in which he recieved a lot of attention from the press, he left town and was never heard of again and no book was ever published.

Then there was the article about some distant branch of the Surratts living in Anderson, including a lot of colorful information and innuendo about how stressful their presence must have been for Louis, but not one iota of documentation that they ever met or noticed or cared about each other's presence.

Finally, in Notes from his courier article of November 1992, Ewald made this mention:

"8. According to the reminiscences of Mary Louise Voght--who remembers her childhood visits to the Weichmann sisters and whose father was baptized by Father Wiechmann--the family was highly regarded in the Anderson community. From conversation with this writer on October 9, 1991. Father Mulcahy's testimony should be considered with caution (understatement!!) as Msgr. Conroy, in the above-cited letter, remarked that Mulcahy,"'...so far as I know, never spoke of Lou Wichman except with undisguised contempt.'"