Trivial Trivia - taking trivia to new levels

[RJNorton]

Mark, I also have that book and you are right. According to Lincoln's secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay, the actual last photographs were taken on the White House's south portico by photographer Henry F. Warren of Waltham, Massachusetts. This information is stated in their Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln.

Also, Matthew Wilson's diary states that the Gardner photographs were actually made on Sunday, February 5, 1865. Wilson was a portrait painter who had accompanied Lincoln to Gardner's studio to provide a model for a portrait Wilson painted afterwards. Lloyd Ostendorf also notes that Gardner's gallery was selling these to the public prior to April.

The "April date error" in Lorant's book is also in a lot of the earlier books. I think most of the recent books have it right, though.