Lincoln Assassination Newspapers

[historybuff22]

While I have ben collecting and researching the Lincoln assassination for over 50 years, I did not start collecting REPRINTS of the April 15, 1865 New York Herald's. This was the first newspaper in the country to carry the news.

In 1985 I started collecting the reprint versions. By 1992 I had 14 different reprint versions. Jump to 2012 and I then had 32 different versions and documented 3 additional ones. About one month ago I sent a letter with a DVD to over two-dozen institutions asking them to check their files and see if they had any additional reprint versions of this edition. A mere month later the number of variants is noW FIFTY-TWO!!! Each institution is going to provide me with scans to add to my online atlas of known reprints! I can hardly wait to see how many more reprint versions the rest of the institutions come up with.

Rick Brown
HistoryReference.org
A Nonprofit Organization

[Gene C]

What are some of the significant differences in the reprint versions? Content, type style, corrected speling?

[historybuff22]

I divided all reprints into two categories: Those created as advertising pieces and those created to sell in Civil War souvenir shops, etc.

1) Most of the advertising reprints were produced by patent medicine companies. All but one of this category were four-page editions. One was a single sheet printed both sides with the back side a full page ad for the Genesee Pure Foods Company - the makers of J-E-L-L-O. This one was produced in 1900 and is the only reprint produced on rag linen paper. All of the rest, including souvenir shop were printed on wood pulp paper. This was a marketing strategy to get their products to the masses. These reprints were given away at any large gatherings such as county fairs, Grange meetings, conventions, etc. The theory was, for example, if their parent medicine was a cure for headaches, and the company man handed you a flyer for their product, most would end up in a trash cans. By putting Lincoln assassination new on the front page, people would keep it as a souvenir Perhaps months later they might get a headache and dig out the reprint and buy the medicine advertised.

2) Only twelve of the 52 reprint variants did not have any advertising in them. Producers varied from Emporiums, to drug stores, to Knot's Berry Farm. All of these reprints have 4 pages except for one - the one produced by Ford's Theatre and Library of Congress.

Over one-half of the reprints clearly state the year produced. For the rest, by researching City Directories of the city where the company that produced a specific reprint was located,, I have determined that perhaps as many as a combined total of one million total reprints were produced between 1871 and 1916!! Unfortunately, an average of 3 of these reprints are offering every week on eBay. Very few identity their specimen as a reprint.

Rick Brown
HistoryReference.org
A Nonprofit Organization

[maharba]

At junk sales and auctions and throwaways probably we've all come across old scrapbooks, papers, memorials, etc. I still see a lot of old Kennedy assassination junk say in a box for a dollar: Life magazines, local newspapers. I've seen Garfield and McKinley and several for Lincoln. Probably threw them out or put them as a pile back into the same old wrapper and a yard sale. I always get the opinion (say as the 911 event) that there must be millions of these out there, can't be worth a dime. You don't see those old turn of the century scrapbooks much now, but I liked the old greeting cards and victorian items they'd put in there, too. And you would see four leaf clovers, pressed flowers, even locks of hair in those scrapbooks. You wonder how many of those older papers may be still be behind the walls or under the linoleum in older houses, yet?