Assasination relics: Clothing, chairs, death-scene stuff, and other macabre items

[Steve]

(07-13-2018 05:08 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Thanks to Steve for sending this 1880 interview with William Withers. The article is from page 2 of the 29 May 1880 edition of the Hamilton County Democrat of Noblesville, Indiana. Steve writes, "In the article Withers said a flag belonging to one member of his orchestra, Pedro/Peter Taltavull (calling him an Italian instead of a Spaniard), was used to decorate the Presidential box. After the assassination, the flag ended up in Withers' possession where he had it for many years before returning it to Taltavull. Withers would've still had the flag in 1867 when he and Jeannie Gourlay divorced. In the newspaper interviews of Gourlay that I've read, she doesn't mention owning the flag or mention her father retrieving the flag from the box or the flag being used to rest Lincoln's head. I propose that Jeannie may have mentioned to her children that she once possessed one of the flags from the box and decades later it morphed into the Struthers family story about her father taking the flag from the box after it was used to rest Lincoln's head with the story being attached to that other flag which was owned by the Struthers family and which is now on display at the Pike Co. museum."

Withers may have meant to refer to fellow orchestra member Scipione Grillo, a Sicilian immigrant, rather than Peter Taltavull as the person who supposedly loaned the flag. Grillo was living in Memphis in 1866, but I don't think Taltavull left Washington.