Path of the assassins

[Linda Anderson]

Thanks, Jim, for the article. I hadn't seen it before.

Do you have a record of Margaret's arrival in the US? It says in the 1900 Census that she arrived in 1853. The Naturalization box was not checked.

The title of "Mrs." was used as a sign of respect for housekeepers no matter what their marital status was. The March 14, 1874 Daily Critic article about Sumner's funeral titled, "The Old Housekeeper," calls her Mrs. Brodhead. Another article in the March 18, 1874 issue of Cincinnati Daily Gazette also calls her Mrs. Brodhead. I don't know where they got "Brodhead" from.

The Sun published "Another Phase of Grantism - Secretary's Seward Nurse Dismissed from Office on Account of her Religion" on Oct, 13, 1876. The article calls her "Mrs. Coleman, who was a nurse at the bedside of Secretary Seward when Paine [Lewis Powell] attempted to assassinate him."

George Robinson, Seward's nurse who actually did save his life, wrote a letter to the New York Times on Oct 25, 1876 which included his letter to the Sun, who never published it. The letter refutes several statements made by the Sun such as Mrs. Coleman, as Robinson also calls her, was not Seward's nurse and she was not injured by Payne.

I don't think anyone writes about Margaret Coleman as "Seward's Savior" these days.

[IrishJim011]

I haven't found any official records of Margaret's immigration - only what you found in the 1900 census. Washington, D.C. is one of those locations that is limited in certain records that have been digitized & are accessable online. I have the same challenge with Pennsylvania ancestors.

The respectful title of "Mrs" makes sense now - I should have realized that as I've seen it before. The Brodhead surname is interesting though, as I haven't come across that.

Thank you for all the additional information!

[Linda Anderson]

(10-02-2020 07:15 PM)IrishJim011 Wrote:  I haven't found any official records of Margaret's immigration - only what you found in the 1900 census. Washington, D.C. is one of those locations that is limited in certain records that have been digitized & are accessable online. I have the same challenge with Pennsylvania ancestors.

The respectful title of "Mrs" makes sense now - I should have realized that as I've seen it before. The Brodhead surname is interesting though, as I haven't come across that.

Thank you for all the additional information!

You're very welcome, Jim. I forgot to add that Robinson wrote in his letter that "...Mrs. Coleman has not been dismissed on account of being a Catholic or on any other account, but is now and always has been holding her original appointment of laborer in the Treasury, Facts of which your correspondent was grossly ignorant, or willfully misrepresented to suit his purposes among people who had no means of knowing the difference between the truth and his mean petty lying."