"Stump the Yankee"

[Rsmyth]

I should have gone back and looked at my own notes:
Lincoln’s Boots – William T. Clark did not return Lincoln’s boots to Robert Todd Lincoln as he said he would. He kept them.. Shortly after the assassination, Clark moved out of the Petersen room. About this time Clark was volunteering his spare time for a Massachusetts agency that assisted wounded soldiers from that state who were recuperating in D.C. hospitals. There he met Justin H. Hatch, another volunteer who was an employee of the federal treasury department. As collateral for a loan, Clark gave Hatch the relics which included Lincoln’s boots, socks, a piece of bloodied towel and a clipping of the President’s hair.
After the war, Hatch returned to his Summer Street home in Lynn, Massachusetts with the relics. Clark moved to Boston where he worked as a bank clerk and a real estate agent. On April 4th, 1888 he died of a heart attack in a Boston store. The loan was never repaid and Hatch retained custody of the items.
At one point, Hatch’s wife, Caroline, fearful that Lincoln’s socks would attract moths burned them in the fireplace. Granddaughter, Ruth Hatch, as a student, brought the boots to school each year around Lincoln’s birthday. She and the other students would put them on and walk around. Later, as a History teacher, Ruth took them to show her students.
In 1947, when Ruth was moving from Summer Street to a new apartment on Franklin Street, picture frames containing the hair clipping and the bloodied piece of towel were accidentally thrown away. At this point, Ruth felt it was time to donate the boots to a museum that could take proper care of them. On April 30, 1947 granddaughter Ruth Hatch donated them to Fords Theatre.