Thank You, Joan Chaconas!

[L Verge]

It was a lucky day almost forty years ago that Joan Chaconas happened to be working as a guide at Surratt House on the very day that descendants of Atzerodt's laywer, William E. Doster, came for a visit. Joan and I would likely have been the only guides at that time to recognize the name Doster. That visit resulted in Joan traveling north to see Doster's old papers - and the discovery of the original, handwritten copy of Atzerodt's confession of May 1, 1865.

That confession had not been entered into testimony in 1865. However, we had seen it printed in an 1869 issue of the Baltimore American newspaper. I believe we have a copy of that in the museum archives. I have often wondered how the newspaper got access to the original. Did Doster give them a copy and permission to publish?

A tidbit on the Oldroyd collection et al and its preservation: In the early-1980s, I kept reading about the "Lincoln Library" at Ford's Theatre. At that time, I was going through a divorce and working three jobs, so Joan did my sleuthing for me and found that the "library" was more extensive.

She was directed to a National Park Service ranger named Mike Harmon, who literally stood guard over the collection, which had been moved into storage on the top floor of DC's wonderful, old Union Station -- where the roof leaked. James O. Hall, John C. Brennan, and Betty Ownsbey were some of the first of our Boothies to use that collection while it was at Union Station and later in a new building in Greenbelt, Maryland. There is now an even better storage facility in Landover, Maryland.