(08-30-2018 09:56 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  On this subject, I think that Abraham Lincoln himself said it best:

"I don't know who my grandfather was. I am much more concerned to know who his
grandson will be." A. Lincoln

(05-06-2020 04:13 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Steve, here is the information I have on the chair.

*******************************************************

Va. Family Donates Relic to Ford's Theatre

Chair Was Removed From Lincoln's Box After Assassination

By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 12, 2005; Page B03

Inside the box at Ford's Theatre where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, most of the furnishings are carefully chosen replicas: the heavy gold drapes and tassels, the red, gold and white floral carpet, the presidential rocker.

But last week, the National Park Service got hold of the real thing. A carved-back, cane-seat parlor chair that was in the presidential box the night Lincoln was shot by actor John Wilkes Booth -- perhaps the one Mary Todd Lincoln was sitting in -- was donated to the government by a Virginia family that had kept the artifact for 140 years.

The carved-back, cane-seat parlor chair was taken when the theater was converted to an office building. (Gloria Swift)

"This is a fabulous thing we've been given. We're very excited about it," said Gloria Swift, the Park Service's curator for Ford's Theatre.

After the assassination darkened the theater in 1865, the government bought the structure on 10th Street NW and turned it into a three-story office building. One of the workers dismantling the theater claimed that his boss had told him to take anything he wanted out of the presidential box. He removed the parlor chair and gave it to the Virginia family, where it was handed down for generations, Swift said.

The family, which Swift said has asked to remain anonymous, tried to sell the chair to the Park Service in the 1950s, when the theater box was being reconditioned as a historic site. But the agency didn't have the cash to buy it and made a replica instead, Swift said.

The current matriarch of the family told the Park Service recently that ownership of the chair was weighing on her.

"All her friends told her she is crazy, that she should sell it on eBay," Swift said. "But she said that giving it to us felt like the right thing to do."

Historians checked the chair for authenticity; the age, markings, style, material and documentation all checked out. And it perfectly matches the chair that Mary Lincoln is sitting on, as well as one empty chair, in a sketch of the assassination in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, the period's paper of record.

The chair was put back in the box last week and can be viewed from behind plexiglass on tours of the theater or during performances. It was reunited with two other authentic pieces from that night -- a tufted settee and a portrait of George Washington.

The crown jewel of that tableau, however, remains out of reach for Swift.

"We'd love to have the rocker that President Lincoln was sitting in," she said, sighing. That chair, seized as evidence by the U.S. War Department for the conspirators' trials, was returned in 1921 to the family who owned the theater, then sold in an auction to Henry Ford (who is no relation to the theater Fords).

It remains in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.

"Our replica is pretty good, though," Swift said.

(05-07-2020 08:44 PM)Steve Whitlock Wrote:  I've read other accounts that didn't include Dr. C. D. Gatch, and gave Dr. Charles Augustus Leale the responsibility for the mortal wound call, so I can't say with any certainty that the news articles supporting Dr. Gatch's assessment of Mr. Lincoln's wound are wholly accurate.

(05-08-2020 04:14 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(05-07-2020 08:44 PM)Steve Whitlock Wrote:  I've read other accounts that didn't include Dr. C. D. Gatch, and gave Dr. Charles Augustus Leale the responsibility for the mortal wound call, so I can't say with any certainty that the news articles supporting Dr. Gatch's assessment of Mr. Lincoln's wound are wholly accurate.

IMO, these other accounts are most likely the accurate ones. Overwhelmingly, historians feel it was Dr. Leale who said, "His wound is mortal; it is impossible for him to recover." Leale does not even mention Dr. Gatch being in the box; he only mentions Dr. King and Dr. Taft as the other physicians who were present. In his book on eyewitness accounts Tim Good writes of Gatch's reminiscence: "This is one of the more inaccurate of the eyewitness accounts."

(05-08-2020 12:47 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Kees, who did a tremendous amount of research, listed Dr. Gatch under this category:

B: : PHYSICIANS PRESENT AT FORD’S THEATRE
(but doubtful if they were in the State Box)

Please see Kees' research here:

https://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussionSymposium/thread-1897.html?highlight=Gatch

For you to say "Perhaps Dr. Leale was relieved by more experienced doctors, and left after doing what he could" goes against everything I have read over the past 50+ years. For more information on Dr. Leale please go here:

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0034.105/--dr-charles-a-leales-report-on-the-assassination-of-abraham?rgn=main;view=fulltext

(05-08-2020 03:59 PM)Steve Whitlock Wrote:  I don't know who the 2 gentlemen were that Dr. Leale mentions, who arrived before Dr. Taft and Dr. King.

"When I reached the President he was in a state of general paralysis,[29] his eyes were closed and he was in a profoundly comatose condition, while his breathing was intermittent and exceedingly stertorous.[30] I placed my finger on his right radial pulse but could perceive no movement of the artery. As two gentlemen now arrived, I requested them to assist me to place him in a recumbent position, and as I held his head and shoulders, while doing this my hand came in contact with a clot of blood near his left shoulder."

His account for the arrival of Dr King and Dr Taft comes later in the narrative.

(05-12-2020 04:37 PM)Steve Wrote:  

(05-08-2020 03:59 PM)Steve Whitlock Wrote:  I don't know who the 2 gentlemen were that Dr. Leale mentions, who arrived before Dr. Taft and Dr. King.

"When I reached the President he was in a state of general paralysis,[29] his eyes were closed and he was in a profoundly comatose condition, while his breathing was intermittent and exceedingly stertorous.[30] I placed my finger on his right radial pulse but could perceive no movement of the artery. As two gentlemen now arrived, I requested them to assist me to place him in a recumbent position, and as I held his head and shoulders, while doing this my hand came in contact with a clot of blood near his left shoulder."

His account for the arrival of Dr King and Dr Taft comes later in the narrative.

Steve,

One of the two people who assisted Dr. Leale moving Lincoln off the rocking chair was Capt. Edwin Bedee of the 12th New Hampshire Inf. who was the second person to climb up into the box. From the way Leale described it, it seems like the unknown man who preceeded Bedee climbing up into the box was the other man who assisted. I haven't found any first-hand accounts by Bedee but I've found this account written three decades later by Asa Bartlett based on Bartlett's interview of Bedee:

https://books.google.com/books?id=TXAhAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA296&lpg=PA296#v=onepage&q&f=false

Bedee says the man who climbed into the box before him claimed to be a doctor. (Note that Bartlett's description of Bedee's account seems to confuse this physician with Leale once describing how another doctor (Leale) broke through the box door.)

Clara Harris's 18 April 1865 affidavit describes this unknown man as dressed in the uniform of a naval surgeon:


(ref: New York Times - 23 April 1865 pg. 3)

At first I thought this person was Dr. Taft and that Clara Harris was mistaken about the uniform. (She had been with Bedee; he was a returned POW not a member of the VRC). But Taft's description of the night didn't match and he describes hearing Leale's calls for water. Also, one of the spectators said Taft climbed after the others climbed into the box:

https://books.google.com/books?id=hbesCQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=snippet&q=climbed&f=false

(By this time Clara Harris was with Mrs Lincoln according to Leale's account and likely wouldn't have been there to help Taft into the box like the others as described in her affidavit.)

This "naval surgeon" doesn't seemed to have crossed over with the President to Peterson House, so I can understand why Dr. Leale wouldn't know his name. But once Leale starts examining the body he seems to disappear completely from the accounts. Bedee and Harris both claim the man was a doctor. Why didn't he make more of an impression on the others? I haven't been able to find any later newspaper accounts of this man coming forward and giving his story.

(05-13-2020 07:15 AM)Steve Whitlock Wrote:  That on April 14th, 1865, at about twenty minutes past eight o'clock in the evening, he, with Miss Clara H. Harris, left his residence, at the corner of Fifteenth and H Streets, and joined the President and Mrs. Lincoln, and went with them in their carriage to Ford's Theatre, in Tenth Street.

(05-07-2020 08:44 PM)Steve Whitlock Wrote:  

(05-06-2020 04:13 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Steve, here is the information I have on the chair.

*******************************************************

Va. Family Donates Relic to Ford's Theatre

Chair Was Removed From Lincoln's Box After Assassination

By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 12, 2005; Page B03

Inside the box at Ford's Theatre where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, most of the furnishings are carefully chosen replicas: the heavy gold drapes and tassels, the red, gold and white floral carpet, the presidential rocker.

But last week, the National Park Service got hold of the real thing. A carved-back, cane-seat parlor chair that was in the presidential box the night Lincoln was shot by actor John Wilkes Booth -- perhaps the one Mary Todd Lincoln was sitting in -- was donated to the government by a Virginia family that had kept the artifact for 140 years.

The carved-back, cane-seat parlor chair was taken when the theater was converted to an office building. (Gloria Swift)

"This is a fabulous thing we've been given. We're very excited about it," said Gloria Swift, the Park Service's curator for Ford's Theatre.

After the assassination darkened the theater in 1865, the government bought the structure on 10th Street NW and turned it into a three-story office building. One of the workers dismantling the theater claimed that his boss had told him to take anything he wanted out of the presidential box. He removed the parlor chair and gave it to the Virginia family, where it was handed down for generations, Swift said.

The family, which Swift said has asked to remain anonymous, tried to sell the chair to the Park Service in the 1950s, when the theater box was being reconditioned as a historic site. But the agency didn't have the cash to buy it and made a replica instead, Swift said.

The current matriarch of the family told the Park Service recently that ownership of the chair was weighing on her.

"All her friends told her she is crazy, that she should sell it on eBay," Swift said. "But she said that giving it to us felt like the right thing to do."

Historians checked the chair for authenticity; the age, markings, style, material and documentation all checked out. And it perfectly matches the chair that Mary Lincoln is sitting on, as well as one empty chair, in a sketch of the assassination in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, the period's paper of record.

The chair was put back in the box last week and can be viewed from behind plexiglass on tours of the theater or during performances. It was reunited with two other authentic pieces from that night -- a tufted settee and a portrait of George Washington.

The crown jewel of that tableau, however, remains out of reach for Swift.

"We'd love to have the rocker that President Lincoln was sitting in," she said, sighing. That chair, seized as evidence by the U.S. War Department for the conspirators' trials, was returned in 1921 to the family who owned the theater, then sold in an auction to Henry Ford (who is no relation to the theater Fords).

It remains in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.

"Our replica is pretty good, though," Swift said.

Roger,

Suzanne Hallstrom asked me to advise you that your photo of Mary Todd Lincoln's chair at the Ford Theatre has been added to Genetic Lincoln, crediting you, and includes a link to the Symposium. She also asks that I convey her "Thank you!" to you.

(05-13-2020 11:49 AM)Anita Wrote:  

(05-07-2020 08:44 PM)Steve Whitlock Wrote:  

Roger,

Suzanne Hallstrom asked me to advise you that your photo of Mary Todd Lincoln's chair at the Ford Theatre has been added to Genetic Lincoln, crediting you, and includes a link to the Symposium. She also asks that I convey her "Thank you!" to you.