(08-30-2018 10:44 AM)Gene C Wrote:  This is new to me

From the above mentioned website link
"Interestingly, there are accounts of a young Abraham Lincoln seeing the meteor storm after he was rousted from his bed in New Salem, Illinois by a church deacon proclaiming the end of the world."

(08-30-2018 11:39 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(08-30-2018 10:44 AM)Gene C Wrote:  This is new to me

From the above mentioned website link
"Interestingly, there are accounts of a young Abraham Lincoln seeing the meteor storm after he was rousted from his bed in New Salem, Illinois by a church deacon proclaiming the end of the world."

Gene, I do not know John F. Kennedy's source, but in a speech in St Louis on October 2, 1960, he said:

"There will be crises, both within and without. But it is, I think, our intention to bear in mind the words of Lincoln during the darkest days of the Civil War. Many were fearful of the outcome and many were concerned about our survival, and when a delegation called on the President to express its fears, Lincoln told them of an experience of his youth. "One night in November," he said, "a shower of meteors fell from the clear night sky. A friend standing by was frightened. But I looked up and between the falling stars I saw the fixed stars beyond, shining serene in the firmament, and I said, 'Let us not mind the meteors, let us keep our eyes on the stars.' "

(The story is in Lincoln Talks by Emanuel Hertz, and Hertz noted his source as Francis Carpenter. However, I checked Carpenter's book, which is listed in Hertz' bibliography, and cannot find the story. Maybe JFK was using Hertz' book, or it is in Carpenter's book, and I cannot find it.)

(03-30-2020 02:00 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Steve, on the website it says:

“This is a piece of the chair and piece of curtain President Lincoln was leaning against in Ford’s Theatre when he was shot.”

Do you know which chair in the State Box at Ford's this piece came from?

(03-30-2020 04:31 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Steve, the reason I asked was because Mary Lincoln was sitting on a chair next to Lincoln's rocker. I have seen her chair described as a "carved-back, cane-seat parlor chair." Personally, I do not think I've ever read that Lincoln's rocking chair is missing any pieces of wood, but I could be wrong on that.

(03-30-2020 04:31 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Steve, the reason I asked was because Mary Lincoln was sitting on a chair next to Lincoln's rocker. I have seen her chair described as a "carved-back, cane-seat parlor chair." Personally, I do not think I've ever read that Lincoln's rocking chair is missing any pieces of wood, but I could be wrong on that.

(03-30-2020 04:31 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Steve, the reason I asked was because Mary Lincoln was sitting on a chair next to Lincoln's rocker. I have seen her chair described as a "carved-back, cane-seat parlor chair." Personally, I do not think I've ever read that Lincoln's rocking chair is missing any pieces of wood, but I could be wrong on that.

(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.