Witness To Lincoln's Assassination - Filmed in 1930

[Anita]

Thanks to Gene, Joe and Roger. Pretty amazing just to see eyewitness accounts on film.

There's a Washington Post article dated March 14, 1929. " Lincoln Assassination Narrated By Two Men Who Saw Tragedy." - The two men are C.L. Willis and J.W. Epperson.
https://archive.org/details/assassinatio...c/mode/2up

Here's part of the Epperson account you might find interesting!

Epperson Viewed Stage
Struggle; Took Drugs
to President.
Special to The Washington Post.
Brownwood, Tex., April 13.— The great and mighty of Washington were filing into Ford's Theater on the night of April 14, 1865.
Three newsboys stood near the en- trance. Two of them had "sold out' and the third had only one paper left. A tall, ungainly figure, with long coat and stovepipe hat, stopped and bought the remaining paper, smiling at the newsboy. It was the President, Abraham Lincoln. Secretary Stanton asked for a paper, too, and was slightly annoyed because there was none for him.
The President and his party proceeded into the theater, leaving the boy staring after them. The newsboy was J. W. Epperson, 11, now a 75-year-old carpenter of Brownwood, Tex., one of the two or three surviving persons who saw Lincoln assassinated.
Epperson and his two friends— one was named McClelland and the other Dougherty — both dead long ago — purchased tickets for the performance, and climbed to the balcony. It was their regular custom.
When John Wilkes Booth appeared on the stage, one of the boys whispered. "There's that crazy fellow."
Epperson had sold papers to Booth regularly and many of the theatrical folk knew them casually. He had sold a paper to the silent and moody Booth earlier that evening.
When the shot was fired the eyes of Epperson and every one in the theater were drawn to the President's box There they saw Secretary Stanton struggling with Booth, saw the demented actor thrown into the lap of a woman, pick himself up and hurry through the back of the theater.
The dazed theatergoers began to stir. Epperson left the balcony and squirmed his way to the scene of the excitement.
When the fatally wounded President was carried out of the theater and to a house across the street the newsboy followed.
Dr. Marshall, the President's physician, wanted an errand boy to run to the drug store. He saw Epperson staring wild-eyed l in the street. He called him, and all that night the little newsboy ran back and forth carrying medicine for Mr. Lincoln.
The next day Mr. Lincoln died.