Presidental Box Photographs

[STS Lincolnite]

(08-05-2014 12:34 PM)Rsmyth Wrote:  Jim Garrett and I were discussing the "recreated" images of the Presidential box at Ford's. What is the evidence that Brady took the pics instead of Gardner? Gardner had left Brady's firm a few years prior but at that point was the government's favorite photographer. Brady had been relegated to studio portraiture. Thanks.

Rich,

On what day were the photographs of Ford's taken? I seem to recall just recently coming across some information that seemed to confirm it was in fact Brady (or more likely someone from his studio) that took the photos at Ford's. I was in the process of some other work and didn't make notation on what I found. Now I'm trying to retrace my steps but can't seem to find what I'm looking for. The date of the photo may help me.

[Jim Garrett]

I've always been very skeptical of Brady credits. Many early photos were credited to Brady but very really Gardner's handiwork from well after his departure from the Brady firm. I would not take Brady credits in "The Restoration of Ford"s Theatre" as credible, mostly because I believe they were basing the credit on previous credits vs an original source. I believe the photos of the Presidential Box were taken very shortly after the assassination (week following).

If I remember correctly, Gardner was the photographer for the Army of the Potomac and was Stanton's photographer. He had reached the top of his profession while Brady seems to have been on the way down. I could be wrong. I would love definitive proof for either man. Both contributed immensely to the world of early photography.

[STS Lincolnite]

In volume 10 of Nicolay and Hay's Abraham Lincoln A History on page 296 & 297, there is a drawing of the stage and boxes at Ford's. The caption (which crosses pages) says: "This drawing was made from two photographs by Brady, lent by W. R. Speare of Washington. One of the photographs (of the President's box, on the opposite page), supposed to be the earlier of the two differs from the other photograph (showing the stage and all the boxes) as regards the three silk flags, apparently regimental flags, fixed at the sides and middle column of the box. Joseph B. Sessford at the time the assistant treasurer of the theater, is authority for the statement that the second photograph (presented to Mr. Speare by L. Moxley, who had it from Mr. Sessford) was taken three to four days after the assassination, when none of the decorations, except the regimental flags, had been removed. The portrait between the flags is an engraving of Washington."

This is not the information I remember reading before but does at least give an account of Brady (or at least his studio) as the photographer that is not dependent on the LOC notations.

The reported photo chain is from Sessford (who I would think would know who took the photo) to Moxley to Speare. I would conclude the knowledge of who took the photo would also have been passed along. That is of course nothing more that supposition.

I will keep looking for the other information I came across earlier.

[Jim Garrett]

(04-25-2015 08:45 PM)STS Lincolnite Wrote:  In volume 10 of Nicolay and Hay's Abraham Lincoln A History on page 296 & 297, there is a drawing of the stage and boxes at Ford's. The caption (which crosses pages) says: "This drawing was made from two photographs by Brady, lent by W. R. Speare of Washington. One of the photographs (of the President's box, on the opposite page), supposed to be the earlier of the two differs from the other photograph (showing the stage and all the boxes) as regards the three silk flags, apparently regimental flags, fixed at the sides and middle column of the box. Joseph B. Sessford at the time the assistant treasurer of the theater, is authority for the statement that the second photograph (presented to Mr. Speare by L. Moxley, who had it from Mr. Sessford) was taken three to four days after the assassination, when none of the decorations, except the regimental flags, had been removed. The portrait between the flags is an engraving of Washington."

This is not the information I remember reading before but does at least give an account of Brady (or at least his studio) as the photographer that is not dependent on the LOC notations.

The reported photo chain is from Sessford (who I would think would know who took the photo) to Moxley to Speare. I would conclude the knowledge of who took the photo would also have been passed along. That is of course nothing more that supposition.

I will keep looking for the other information I came across earlier.

Great job tracking down Sessford's statement. I would agree, I think Sessford to be a pretty reliable source. BTW, Sessford is buried in Congresional. I was there on Friday.

[Rsmyth]

I find this information very interesting as it may shine light on another flag!
Sessford describes “three-silk flags, apparently regimental flags.” Then says the photograph “was taken three to four days after the assassination, when none of the decorations, except the regimental flags, had been removed. “
The three Treasury Guard flags displayed at Ford’s Theatre that night were all silk. One was a regimental flag. The others were the national and presentation flags. Evidence shows that these three flags were returned to the Treasury Dept. on April 15th. Sessford’s recollection that the only items missing from the box 3 – 4 days after the assassination were the 3-silk regimental flags seems to indicate the Treasury Guard flags. That means the remaining two flags displayed on the box were still there 3 – 4 days after the assassination when the theater was in lock down mode. No one without authority could get in or out. Some actors and musicians had to write letters to the secretary of war asking permission to have their costumes and instruments returned.
If Sessford’s statement is true then The Lincoln Flag (a wool flag), if it was displayed on the box would still be there and could not have been removed by Thomas Gourlay. That lends credence to the theory that The Lincoln Flag, if the story is true, was an extra flag, possibly stored within the box.

[L Verge]

I know there have been previous postings on this forum regarding Booth's leap from the Presidential Box and his boot catching on either a flag or the George Washington lithograph's frame, but I'm too lazy to search for it so am posting this here. It did my heart good to read this because I was once corrected by a well-known assassination author who heard me tell someone the story of the frame having a wedge gouged out of it - perhaps by Booth's spur. I was told that the scar on the frame happened years later and was likely cut by a knife-weilding souvenir hunter.

A Surratt member from Tennessee just sent me a reprint of a 1913 article of the Washington Star newspaper written by H. Clay Ford "...a retired theatrical manager, formerly a Washingtonian and now a resident of Rutherford, N.J. who is spending a few days here, talked interestingly of the shooting of Abraham Lincoln forty-eight years ago in Ford's Theatre, on Tenth Street.

"Mr. Ford, who is visiting his son, H. Chapman Ford, at the Thatcher Hotel on Thirteenth Street, was treasurer of Ford's Theatre the night of the tragedy, and he declared that the story that John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin, caught his foot in the folds of an American flag as he was making his escape, and that 'Old Glory' delayed the murderer is a popular misconception. A picture of George Washington served to delay Booth, Mr. Ford says.

"'I remember the tragedy as if it were but yesterday,' Mr. Ford said. 'The theatre was owned by my brother, the late John T. Ford, and I was his treasurer and in the box-office at the time. When I heard Booth's first shot, which eventually ended Lincoln's life, it occurred to me casually that the pistol used by Sir Edward Trenchard in Our American Cousin, the play that night, had gone off accidentally. Sir Edward, in the play, puts a pistol to his head at the end of the first act.

"'In a second, however, an afterthought came to me. I knew it was not the time of the evening for him to put the pistol to his head.

"'In the ticket office there was a window, from which I could see the audience. I looked out, and there was Booth on the stage, where he had leaped from the box. I knew him well. The President and his party had been seated in two boxes, which I had helped to make into one, decorating them with flags which we had borrowed from the Treasury Department. In the center of the box I had placed a picture of George Washington with the flags on both sides. It was this picture which caught Booth's foot. I know it, because his spur made a large cut in the picture. They always said 'Old Glory' delayed him, but it didn't - George Washington's picture did it. I saw the picture again in Baltimore while I was visiting the widow of John T. Ford in whose possession it now is.'"