Present at the Assassination - Michigan's Boy Surgeon?

[Linda Anderson]

(07-08-2014 09:34 PM)CJSchoonover Wrote:  I think the man you are thinking about Linda was Wilson Kenzie. The Courier was nice enough to publish an article I wrote regarding Kenzie's claim that he was at Ford's as well as the Garrett Farm in their May, 2012 edition. Hope this name rings a bell.

Thanks, Cal! Kenzie has an interesting tale to tell.

The person I was thinking of is Hollis Lorenzo Chubbock. I found the article about him in the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection. It's from the 2/10/1949 California Eagle, "An Eyewitness Account of Lincoln's Assassination." The paper took the story from the Genealogical Report of the Historical Society of Philadelphia published in 1913.

Chubbock tells an incredible story with many errors, two of which are that Chubbock did not start the fire at the Garretts' barn and no one burned to death in the barn.

"On page 677 [of the Report] it is reported that Hollis Lorenzo Chubbock, born August 23, 1828 at Towawanda, Bedford County, Pennsylvania, was present in Ford's Theatre when president Lincoln was assassinated.
"According to an account that appeared in the St. Louis Globe Democrat at that time, Holllis Chubbock was close enough to the assassin Booth to have caught him.
"Chubbock is quoted in the article as having said, 'I was within a few feet of Mr. Lincoln when he was assassinated. I saw Booth walk along the aisle next to the wall and pass through the door onto the stage. I was watching him closely but not suspiciously.
"'He walked up behind the president, and before I knew or realized what he was up to he stepped nimbly aside and a deafening shot rang out. It was all done so quick no one seemed to realize what had happened.
"'While it may seem incredible, I leaped from the small railing around the orchestra to the footlights and was within a few inches of the assassin when he dodged around some scenery. I followed and I know I would have caught him when he fell had it not been for some of the excited stage hands who blocked my way.'
"Colonel Hollis L. Chubbock was for many years Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture under Isaac Newton, and for more than thirty years, he was an officer of the law among the Cherokee and Osage Indians.
"It was Colonel Chubbock who touched the match to the barn where the assassin Booth was supposed to have been cornered. However, Chubbock was never certain that the man consumed by the flames of the burning barn was Booth. In later years he went to Enid Oklahoma to view the remains of a suicide who was thought to be Booth.
"Chubbock unhesitatingly stated that, in his opinion, the man was Booth and the man burned in the barn was not Booth.
"'I sometimes feel positive the dead man I saw in Enid,' Colonel Chubbock said, 'was Booth and again I look back over the many intervening years, and think I may be mistaken.
"'...I have nothing to go by, only the stealthy cat-like movements of the actor (Booth) as he approached his victim, and the frenzied dash of the murderer after the terrible deed had been perpetrated.'"