Interesting Relic

[Finnigan]

(07-12-2018 04:27 PM)Finnigan Wrote:  I'll look it up this evening in my Tomb files.

Here is my report:

I spent over an hour looking through my Tomb files, which include both primary source documents, secondary sources, and newspapers.

While I could find some contemporary accounts of the state of Lincoln's coffin and remains from both the 1887 and 1901 reburials, I could find nothing describing a flag or red cloth fragments. They all described his physical appearance or the clothes he was wearing.

However, I did find this:

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"There were red spots, too, that looked like vestiges of material, and someone said there must have been a small American flag that had rotted away."

Dorothy M. Kunhardt, "Saga of Lincoln's Body," LIFE, February 15, 1963, p. 88

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That, I think, is the source I used for my Tomb FAQ. But as I skimmed it again last evening, I find that I really don't like it as a reliable source.

Besides the fact that the article contains at least 2 errors that I noticed while skimming through it*, there are no sources cited, though I assume that the source for the article was Fleetwood Lindley of Springfield. The description of the "red spots" sounds like guesswork at best.

My question is: how could a flag deteriorate so much in about 35 years such that its fragments could no longer be positively identified?

Also, I found no mention of the uniform in the coffin. My search was not exhaustive. For example, I only checked my "quick newspaper archive" and not my full newspaper archive. The flag in the coffin may be described in an 1865 account during the funeral or somesuch.


* errors: article says Fleetwood was 13. He was in fact 14, as his birthday was 4th April 1887. Then the article describes Memorial Hall as "unfinished." Well in September 1901, it was finished. Reconstruction of the Monument was completed in Spring 1901 when the family caskets were all pulled out of the temporary tomb and reburied in the newly-rebuilt Monument in April.