Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth

[RJNorton]

I found this interesting.

Gath mentions (p14) in describing the appearance of Lincoln's embalmed remains, that Lincoln had Willie disinterred twice to look upon him. That has been mentioned by others, but I can't recall who, was it Lamon? (I never realized Lamon was almost 20 years younger than Lincoln)

Lincoln wanted to see his son Willie again so badly that he had him exhumed once or twice just so he could see his face.

In 40-plus years of reading about Lincoln, not once have I ever come across this in any of the main biographies or books about the aspects of his life. Doing a quick Google search, I saw this mentioned on various websites but none gave a source. I looked through four main Lincoln biographies (Burlingame, Donald, White and Oates) and not one mentions this ever happening. I would be interested in knowing a verifiable source for this outside of the internet.

Gene, I agree with Rob. I do not know what the original source is for this story. I would assume Gath must have read or heard this somewhere, but I do not know his source. I would guess the story was in the newspapers, but if so, I do not know their source for it.