Lincoln Discussion Symposium

I have found myself on a research tangent that I need some help on. It started with me finding an old article from a woman in Denver who claimed that John Wilkes Booth gave her grandmother a photograph of himself at the National Hotel on the morning of Lincoln's assassination. She gave her grandmother's name as Cynthia Allen Brooks and that JWB saw her at breakfast at the National on April 14th. It's an interesting claim I was actual able to find some members of the family actually living at the National Hotel in 1870, so there may be a grain a truth in it. But that article was just a catalyst for my big research question.

You see, I knew there was another story about John Wilkes Booth's breakfast at the National Hotel on the morning of Lincoln's assassination. According to an article that George Alfred Townsend (GATH) wrote on April 29, 1865, JWB shared his morning meal with a Miss Carrie Bean:

"On the morning of the murder, Booth breakfasted with Miss Carrie Bean, the daughter of a merchant, and a very respectable young lady, at the National Hall. He arose from the table at, say eleven o'clock. During the breakfast, those who watched him say that he was lively, piquant and self-possessed as ever in his life."

Now we've talked about Carrie Bean before on this forum. Jenny had a great post about her back in in 2015. She pointed out the oddness of calling Carrie Bean a "young lady" because the Carrie Bean we all know was a widowed mother of 3 at the time of the assassination.

Jenny also quotes from John T. Ford, who wrote the following about the breakfast:
"On the morning of April 14, 1865, it was fully 11 A.M. when John Wilkes Booth came from his chamber and entered the breakfast-room at the National Hotel, Washington. He was the last man at breakfast that day; one lady only (Miss Carrie Bean) was in the room, finishing her morning meal. She knew him and responded to his bow of recognition."

While Carrie Bean's FindaGrave page states that this quote from John T. Ford was from an interview he did in 1865, that is not where this quote comes from. Rather, this is from an article Ford composed in The North American Review in 1889.

Now I've been to Carrie Bean's grave at Congressional Cemetery. She later married a man named John Russell but is buried next to her first husband, William Bean, and her parents in Congressional.

With this Denver article prodding me, I realized how little support we have that Carrie Bean dined with JWB on the morning of April 14th. It really all comes down to GATH. John T. Ford wasn't even in D.C. on April 14th and his article was clearly influenced by GATH's article which he published later that year as The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth. The part about Carrie Bean is repeated in that book.

But so many things don't add up. GATH writes that "Miss" Carrie Bean was a "young lady" and the "daughter of a merchant". But none of those descriptors really match our Carrie Bean. I'm not trying to be insulting but I have a hard believing that in the 1860s, a 34 year-old widow with three children would be be considered a "Miss" or "young". Also, Carrie's father was not a merchant. According to his obituary, Thomas Copeland had been a "master machinist and engineer of the U.S. Navy Yard". In addition, Copeland had died in 1856. GATH's inclusion of him makes it seem like he was still alive. Also why was Carrie Bean at the National Hotel? She was a D.C. resident, so why stay at a hotel?

The more I thought about it, the more none of it made sense. GATH is so untrustworthy on a lot of stuff, but it still seemed odd to me that he would completely make up Carrie Bean's breakfast with JWB out of whole cloth.

Then I saw, Carrie Bean's FindaGrave page which has a couple pictures from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper from March 23, 1861. Jenny included these pictures in her 2015 post, but the image links have since failed. Here is a link to the issue of Frank Leslie's that I'm referring to: https://archive.org/details/sim_leslies-...ew=theater

The cover image shows the fashion of several ladies who attended the inaugural ball of President Lincoln in 1861. The left most woman on the top row is labeled "Miss Carrie Bean". This drawing is the same one included in Carrie Bean's FindaGrave page, demonstrating that Carrie was quite the fashionable woman and got invited to the inaugural ball.

But here's the rub, I don't think this is a drawing of Carrie Bean the D.C. resident. If you look at the other named ladies on the cover you see that most just have their names but some say their city. For example there's "Miss White, of Washington" and "Mrs. Frank Smith, of Boston" on the top row with Carrie Bean. "Mrs. Alexander of Washington" and "Mrs. Rice, of Boston" are on the bottom row. Why, didn't Carrie Bean's name say, "of Washington" after it? Well the answer lies inside the pages of the edition. The inaugural ball is discussed inside the paper on page 285. It describes the different fashions of the ladies including the women on the cover. For Carrie Bean, it says, "Miss Bean, of New York, in white tarletan"

None of the descriptors GATH gives for the Carrie Bean that JWB had breakfast with match the Carrie Bean buried at Congressional Cemetery in D.C. But what if that's because we've been looking at the wrong Carrie Bean the whole time? What if this "Miss Carrie Bean" from New York, who attended the 1861 inauguration is the person GATH was referring to? Lincoln's second inauguration was only a month before. Was it possible that Miss Bean returned to D.C. in March of 1865 in order to take part in the festivities once again and just stayed on at the National Hotel for a month? Such long hotel stays were not uncommon at the time. John Wilkes Booth, his fiancée Lucy Hale, and Lucy's family had all been staying at the National Hotel for months before the assassination.

When trying to work backwards I was hoping that the NY Carrie Bean would have a connection to the Lincolns which might explain her presence at the inaugural ball in 1861. In trying various searches, I came across an article about Robert Todd Lincoln's marriage in 1868. Among the description of the different wedding guests is the following:

"Miss Cora [sic] Bean, of New York, was dressed in white French muslin, elegantly embroidered over a purple silk, with amethyst necklace, earrings and bracelets. Her dress was made in the latest and most fashionable style."

I'm not sure if this Cora Bean is the same as the Carrie Bean from the inauguration ball, but the fact that a similarly named woman has turned up at yet another Lincoln function seems promising. However, Jason Emerson, in his book about Robert Lincoln, cites "Miss Cora Bean" as attending but states she was a friend of Mary Harlan, which may complicate things.

So now I'm on the hunt for this New York based Carrie Bean. I want to find out who she was, how old she was in 1865, what connection she might have had to the Lincolns, if she ever stayed at the National Hotel, and if her father was a merchant as stated by GATH. I know we have some great researchers here on the forum and I could use all the eyes I can get to try and find this elusive New York Carrie Bean who may have been the one who dined with John Wilkes Booth on the morning of April 14, 1865.

It's impossible for the Carrie Bean buried at Congressional Cemetery to be the Carrie Bean mentioned in Townsend's article. She married her second husband, John Russell on July 14, 1862 in Washington DC. That's nearly 3 years before the assassination.

Dave, Steve sent me a couple of articles to post. Steve writes, "They're two articles written by Townsend in June 1865 about a West Point function involving Gen. Grant. Townsend lists one of the female attendees as a Carrie Bean. This Carrie Bean could've been local to West Point or a family member of somebody in the military and could've been nowhere near Washington during the assassination. Also note that Townsend refers to the woman as "Miss Carrie Bean" in the first article and "Mrs. Carrie Bean" in the second article.

Steve and Roger,

Thanks for this. I had seen those two articles about West Point as well. It's clear that GATH took a fancy to Miss/Mrs. Carrie Bean - having mentioned her in three articles in a period of months.

I found another article about an event in D.C. in 1864 that appears to have been attended by our lady:

Thanks to Steve - he found another mention of her. Steve writes, "Miss Bean seems to be mentioned in passing in a 02 February 1863 gossip column in the Boston Post."

Thanks to Steve as he found two more articles. Steve writes, "The first one is from page 3 of the 16 Feb 1865 edition of the Daily National Republican. In it, Miss Bean is being escorted to a party by none other than John Hay. There is also a Mrs. Bean attending with her (her mother, perhaps?). Note that the article connects the Beans to Senator Harlan. The second article is from page 1 of the 26 Sept. 1868 edition of the Washington Evening Star about Robert Lincoln's wedding. It says Cora Bean was from New York. I haven't seen "Cora Bean" mentioned in other newspaper articles, so right now my suspicion is that Cora may just be a misprint of Carrie in the wedding articles. But that doesn't really fill in the blanks of who she and her parents/family were."

I've found a couple articles which establish that Senator Harlan resided at the National Hotel while in Washington in 1864 and 1865. So perhaps their connection is just that they were all living in the same place, and perhaps Mary Harlan got close with Carrie Bean as a result.

Welp, I just spent a few hours tracking down what happened to be a false lead. The proprietor of United States Hotel just a block away from the National was a man named Moses Bean [sometimes spelled Beane]. His FindaGrave page said he had two sons and a daughter but didn't give the names of them. I eventually found the two sons, Frank and John, but not the daughter. Turns out it was a step-daughter. Emugenia Erksine was first married to a man named Jesse Wheeler and they had a daughter named Martha Jane Wheeler. After Wheeler died, Emugenia married Moses Bean. As much as I hoped these were our ladies "Mrs. Bean and Miss Bean" I no longer feel this is the case.

I did however learn that a Congressman from North Carolina named John T. Deweese resigned his House seat after he took a bribe from these Beans to get their son, John, into the Naval Academy. So that's interesting.

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Just to add to our collection, it looks like Mrs. and Miss Bean took a trip to Mount Vernon with members of Congress and "guests at the National Hotel" in 1864

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Alright here's another possible lead that I've gotten stumped on, but it looks promising.

In the 1860 census there is a 17 year old "Caroline Bean" residing in in Greenburgh, Westchester County, New York. This is right outside of the city and her post office is listed as Tarrytown. The census states she was born in New York.

Caroline Bean is the only person with the last name of Bean in the household. The head of the house is Robert Bowne Minturn, a merchant with real estate valued at $200,000 and a personal estate valued at $250,000. Here is the Wikipedia page about Robert Bowne Minturn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bowne_Minturn The dude was loaded.

How Caroline Bean is related, if at all, to Minturn and his family is unclear. Plus there is no reference to a "Mrs. Bean" that could be this girl's mother. Still, Minturn was a very wealthy merchant and someone who could definitely provide fancy clothes and get you into high society. So perhaps Minturn could be the merchant "father" GATH was talking about. If only we could figure out how the two are connected.

(08-28-2023 02:56 PM)Dave Taylor Wrote: [ -> ]Alright here's another possible lead that I've gotten stumped on, but it looks promising.

In the 1860 census there is a 17 year old "Caroline Bean" residing in in Greenburgh, Westchester County, New York. This is right outside of the city and her post office is listed as Tarrytown. The census states she was born in New York.

Caroline Bean is the only person with the last name of Bean in the household. The head of the house is Robert Bowne Minturn, a merchant with real estate valued at $200,000 and a personal estate valued at $250,000. Here is the Wikipedia page about Robert Bowne Minturn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bowne_Minturn The dude was loaded.

How Caroline Bean is related, if at all, to Minturn and his family is unclear. Plus there is no reference to a "Mrs. Bean" that could be this girl's mother. Still, Minturn was a very wealthy merchant and someone who could definitely provide fancy clothes and get you into high society. So perhaps Minturn could be the merchant "father" GATH was talking about. If only we could figure out how the two are connected.

I'm skeptical that this Caroline Bean is the same person as our Carrie Bean. I think she's more likely a servant or live-in maid working for the Mintrum family. The household starts with the Mintrum family, then a 30 yr old woman with no occupation, then several servants and a Coachman, then there's a page break, and then there's several more people in the household with different surnames and birth places. Caroline is in this later group. I think it's likely this group of people on the second page are also servants and the census-taker got lazy filling in their occupations. But still this is the 1860 census which doesn't provide individuals' relationships to the head of household, so who knows for sure.

After a couple of weeks of research, I think I finally figured out who Carrie Bean was. I wrote all about her here: https://lincolnconspirators.com/2023/09/...rrie-bean/

Thanks to Steve and Roger for your assistance.

Great research, Dave!

Great article David! And I second Susan on the great research! Also, I'm just a tad jealous that I couldn't nail down Carrie Bean to a specific person like you were able to.