Missing Plane and Mysteries of the Lincoln Assassination

[LincolnToddFan]

Hello everyone, I am new here after browsing for awhile. I've been under the Lincoln Spell for longer than I want to tell all of you. Let's just say I was about 7 or 8 years old and Lyndon Johnson was president of the US and leave it at that, okay?

I am a warts-and-all lover of our 16th president, and while I wouldn't exactly say I love Mary as well, I do have great sympathy for her. I feel protective of her at times, and have become a little annoyed with certain highly respected historians who seem to refuse to cut the poor woman any slack while presenting Lincoln as pretty much the perfect man. But more about that later. My Starburst addiction has reared it's ugly head recently, and I'm off to have some.

Anyway, I am happy and honored to join such an intelligent and knowledgeable group as yourselves...I HAVE FOUND MY PEOPLE!!

BTW...here is my Lincoln mystery question...what happened to the president's brain after it was removed during the autopsy? I find it unfathomable that it could have been...misplaced. What happened to the flag that wrapped his remains when he was returned to the WH from the Petersen House?

And last but not least....who stole Nanny and Nanko, his beloved pet goats, after his funeral??! They were directed by Mary to be taken to the Montgomery Blair home in Silver Spring but my fear is that they landed on someone's dinner table instead!

[RJNorton]

Welcome, Toia! I have not read what happened with the goats or flag, but I think I've read that the brain was weighed but not retained. Hopefully someone will know for certain.

[HerbS]

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Your sense of humor has outdone itself! Hess1865

[JMadonna]

(03-29-2014 10:23 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  I am happy and honored to join such an intelligent and knowledgeable group as yourselves...I HAVE FOUND MY PEOPLE!!

Be careful of what you wish.

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(03-29-2014 07:20 PM)Hess1865 Wrote:  Here's the scoop: a UFO piloted by Elvis snagged the plane because there was a shipment of peanut butter and fresh bananas onboard. The King hadn't had one of his PB&banana sandwiches in eons, and he had to do something rash.
Also on the UFO was Jimmy Hoffa, who was giving mambo lessons to Marilyn Monroe and JFK

Big deal.
CNN devoted a full hour on that theory.

[Hess1865]

OK, this may sound really morbid, but happened to the blood that was drained from Lincoln's body when they embalmed it??

[LincolnToddFan]

(03-30-2014 08:20 PM)Hess1865 Wrote:  OK, this may sound really morbid, but happened to the blood that was drained from Lincoln's body when they embalmed it??

Hi Hess, I've often wondered the same thing..I'm no chemist but I don't think it could be sitting around in a jar in the basement of the Smithsonian, could it? After almost 150 years it I would think it's all dried up and disintegrated, no? I think it was disposed of after the autopsy, but bits of clothing and bedding with his blood stains can still be seen in public and private collections across the country.

I remember seeing spots of the president's blood preserved on the shirtsleeve of Dr. Charles Leale when my 3rd grade class took a field trip to the War Museum.(Or was it the Smithsonian?) And I was fascinated. There were also bone fragments from Lincoln's skull under glass. You think you're morbid, eh? I remember throwing a mini-tantrum because the tour guide would not take the bones out so I could touch them!

[Gene C]

(03-29-2014 07:20 PM)Hess1865 Wrote:  Here's the scoop: a UFO piloted by Elvis snagged the plane because there was a shipment of peanut butter and fresh bananas onboard. The King hadn't had one of his PB&banana sandwiches in eons, and he had to do something rash.
Also on the UFO was Jimmy Hoffa, who was giving mambo lessons to Marilyn Monroe and JFK

This reminds me of a song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtf7UbzCPz8

[RJNorton]

(03-29-2014 10:23 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  And last but not least....who stole Nanny and Nanko, his beloved pet goats, after his funeral??! They were directed by Mary to be taken to the Montgomery Blair home in Silver Spring but my fear is that they landed on someone's dinner table instead!

Toia, I have tried to find what happened with the goats, but I am drawing a blank. Is it certain the goats were still there in 1865? On August 8, 1863, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Mary (who was away). Regarding the goats he wrote:

"Tell dear Tad, poor 'Nanny Goat', is lost; and Mrs. Cuthbert & I are in distress about it. The day you left Nanny was found resting herself, and chewing her little cud, on the middle of Tad's bed. But now she's gone! The gardener kept complaining that she destroyed the flowers, till it was concluded to bring her down to the White House. This was done, and the second day she had disappeared, and has not been heard of since. This is the last we know of poor 'Nanny'."

[Eva Elisabeth]

I thought of this letter, too, and then concluded either Nanny goat did return and there simply exists not letter because Tad was at "home" then, or they got new goats, because Elizabeth Keckley writes in "Behind the Scenes":
"After Mr. Lincoln's death, the goats that he loved so well were given away--I believe to Mrs. Lee, nee Miss Blair, one of the few ladies with whom Mrs. Lincoln was on intimate terms in Washington."

[L Verge]

I'm not buying Mrs. Keckly's rendition! The disappearance of Nanny smells to me like a parent telling another parent that Nanny has been put out to pasture -- in someone else's back yard.

[Eva Elisabeth]

In one account on the White House stable fire on Feb.10, 1864, White House guard Sergeant Smith Stimmel reported: "...The ponies belonging to the little boys and the goats were all lost in the fire."

[RJNorton]

On p. 178 of Lincoln's Sons Ruth Painter Randall writes of the fire, "The current (italics are mine) pet goats also perished." Maybe I am reading too much into the author's words, but she seems to be saying that Nanny and Nanko had already been replaced by then (February 10, 1864).

[LincolnToddFan]

(03-31-2014 09:56 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(03-29-2014 10:23 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  And last but not least....who stole Nanny and Nanko, his beloved pet goats, after his funeral??! They were directed by Mary to be taken to the Montgomery Blair home in Silver Spring but my fear is that they landed on someone's dinner table instead!

Toia, I have tried to find what happened with the goats, but I am drawing a blank. Is it certain the goats were still there in 1865? On August 8, 1863, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Mary (who was away). Regarding the goats he wrote:

"Tell dear Tad, poor 'Nanny Goat', is lost; and Mrs. Cuthbert & I are in distress about it. The day you left Nanny was found resting herself, and chewing her little cud, on the middle of Tad's bed. But now she's gone! The gardener kept complaining that she destroyed the flowers, till it was concluded to bring her down to the White House. This was done, and the second day she had disappeared, and has not been heard of since. This is the last we know of poor 'Nanny'."

Hi RJ...I am basing my fears for the fate of the goats on a letter Mary wrote to Elizabeth Blair Lee from Chicago in July 1865. She and Tad wanted to know if the goats were enjoying their new home at the Blair estate in Silver Spring, MD where she assumes they had arrived following her directive from the WH on the day she left. She is surprised and dismayed when EBL replies that the goats never arrived. Mary's letter to EBL can be read in it's entirety in Linda Leavitt-Turner's excellent 1972 book The Letters of Mary Todd Lincoln. I own this book and it contains about 600 pieces of MTL's correspondence, all that was known to exist until Jason Emerson's fantastic discovery of her "lost" letters about a decade ago.

So, there were definitely some pet goats living at the WH at the time of the assassination. Maybe they had replaced the famous Nanny and Nanko? It's always bothered me that someone might have taken advantage of the chaos of MTL's final days at the residence and stolen those poor animals. Lord knows what became of them on their way to Silver Spring, MD...they never made it!

The Lincolns just had terrible luck with their pets...the burnt ponies in the barn, the (probably)kidnapped goats, and of course the brutally murdered Fido. Passionate animal lover that I am, it makes me very sad.

You are a sweetheart to try and find out for me...thanks!