List of Ford's Theatre Attendees

[Linda Anderson]

I found a Joseph Coombs in the 1870 Census who was born in 1817, lived in DC and was a lawyer. He could be the Mr. Coombs, bank inspector, who accompanied the 98-year-old Mrs. Deothe to Ford's on April 14.

I haven't looked through all the names in the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection but I did find one person, William Hearsey of Dayton (Folder 3), who is not on the list.

"As a soldier Mr. Hearsey happened to be in Washington, and, having heard of the fame of Laura Keene as. an actress, and also of the fact that the President would attend, went to Ford's Theater to pass the evening."

Also, I noticed that a twelve year old boy, Henry B. Polkinhorn (sometimes spelled "Polkenhorn) in Folders 2, 3 & 5, is on the list as having claimed to carry the dying Lincoln across the street but I think he was just listed in Clark's article as one of the people in Ford's Theatre that night who were still alive in 1923 when Clark first read his article to the Columbia Historical Society.

"Of those whose witnessed the assassination and happily survive although nearly sixty years intervene are Colonel Otto J. Downing of Dixon Ill., - he was of the five who bore Mr. Lincoln across the street - Louis Kettler, Myron M. Parker, Henry B. Polkinhorn, and Mrs. Beekman DuBarry, all of the City of Washington, D.C.," 104.

Allen C. Clark, “Lincoln in the National Capital,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., 27 (1925)

This article has a photo of "little Henry."

https://archive.org/details/assassinatio...1/mode/2up