Tom Pendel

[RJNorton]

Many thanks to Steve for sending this article. Steve writes, "I have an article to post to the forum. It's from page 16 of the 17 Oct. 1897 edition of the Boston Globe. It's an interview with White House doorman Tom Pendel. It contains an interesting perspective of the night of the assassination from the point of view of someone at the White House. There's also an anecdote of an encounter between Lincoln and a man on the stairwell of the Navy Dept. that I don't think I've seen before."

[John Fazio]

Steve and Roger:

It appears that Anthony Pitch didn't get it quite right when he titled his book "They Have Killed Papa Dead". Tad had said "They have killed Papa-Day", which was the way he had come to address his father.

I have quite a lot on Pendel in my book: Decapitating the Union.

John

[RJNorton]

I can see at least one error in the article. Pendel was not the sole survivor of the bodyguards of Abraham Lincoln. At least one more...William H. Crook...was still alive in 1897.

Also, at the moment, I do not recall Ward H. Lamon being a neighbor of the Lincolns in Springfield. I stand corrected on that if anyone knows for certain.

[ReignetteC]

As the article notes, Pendel posed in one of Lincoln's black suits for the artist, William Morris Hunt. Hunt's widow donated the black suit to the National Museum in 1894.

[Jim Garrett]

William Crook is buried at Arlington. He wrote Through Five Administrations.