Ladd at Deathbed?

[Dan Pearson]

Below is a link to a story about one Major Jonathan Ladd of Lowell, Massachusetts, who, the article claims, may have been present at the deathbed of Abraham Lincoln. Without having the time at present to look into the story further, has anyone any information about such a person having been present at that moment?

http://bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/...story.html

[Jim Garrett]

Ford's Theatre was also contacted about the Ladd story and they asked me if I was familiar with Ladd & the watch. Rich Smyth and I both think the info/story is a little thin. Not saying he wasn't there, but.....

[RJNorton]

I have checked every book I have and can find absolutely no mention of Ladd being at the Petersen House. Paul Mellen has created a website on Ladd here.

[Rsmyth]

Rare picture of Jim Garrett climbing out of the bed after Lincoln's body had been removed to the White House. Jim (yes, he is older than he looks) had been up all night timing the President's breathing and later lay down to take a nap. Julius Ulke who took this picture asked Jim to get out of the way.

[RJNorton]

Wow, Rich, we have really had some new discoveries as a rare photo of Booth in the passageway was also submitted today. Now that we have these photos I don't think it will concern me so much that we have no photos of John Lloyd, John F. Parker, and Peanut John.

[BettyO]

What in the world is Jim doing?!? Climbing over something?

That's hysterical! It does look like he's climbing over the back of the bed.....

[L Verge]

That better be photoshopped!

[LincolnMan]

So Jim actually knows what Stanton really said! Jim, was it "angels" or "ages?"

[Jim Garrett]

angels.................no photoshop.

[RJNorton]

(10-17-2013 03:09 PM)LincolnMan Wrote:  So Jim actually knows what Stanton really said! Jim, was it "angels" or "ages?"

For folks new to this debate please go here.

[RJNorton]

https://www.lowellsun.com/2021/02/12/doe...death-bed/

[Steve Whitlock]

(02-13-2021 09:49 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  https://www.lowellsun.com/2021/02/12/doe...death-bed/

The attached newsclip merely confirms that paymaster Maj J. Ladd was in DC in 1861, as the article from the link mentions. No information at present as to whether he was still there in 1865, or at Lincoln's deathbed.

Clip is from 18 Nov 1861, Mon, Pg2, Evening Star, Washington DC.

There is also mention of Maj. Ladd being court-martialed in 1865.

Collecting Civil War WatchesBy Clint Geller, FNAWCC
Testimony of Sutler, Luther Caldwell, at the Court Martial of US Maj. Jonathan Ladd, Paymaster, June 10, 1865

He testified that watches were bought for $33.50 and sold for $60.00 in the barracks, of which Maj Ladd received 1/4 or about $6.50. They sold about 400 watches.

[Steve]

The notion that Jonathan Ladd (or somebody named Ladd) was present at Lincoln's deathbed comes from a typewritten copy of an 1892 speech to the Ohio Society of New York given by Brig. Gen. Henry Lawrence Burnett which is held by the Goshen (NY) Historical Society and Library. I'll quote the relevant passages below:

After finishing this case, I was kept on court-martial duty at Cincinnati, Lexington and Louisville for some time and, finally at the request of Governor Morton in September 1864, I was ordered to Indiana to act as Judge Advocate of the court detailed to try the members of the "Knights of the Golden Circle" or "Sons of Liberty." These trials were finished sometime in December of that year, and I entered almost immediately upon the trial of the Chicago conspirators -- St. Leger, Grenfel, and others, who had come over from Canada to engage in the enterprise of releasing the rebel prisoners then in Camp Douglas near Chicago.

While making the closing argument in this case, on the 17th of April, 1865, I received a dispatch from the Secretary of War, directing me to report in person immediately to the War Department to aid in the examinations respecting the murder of the President. I started for Washington the same evening, reached there on the morning of the 19th, and was "specially assigned by the Secretary of War for duty on the investigation of the murder of President Lincoln and the attempted assassination of Mr. Seward", and a room was assigned to me in the War Department.

I quote the above passage just to show that Burnett wasn't in Washington at the time and takes his description of the deathbed from newspaper and magazine accounts of the scene. Now here is the transcription from the relevant section of the typewritten copy of Burnett's account about Lincon's deathbed. I've bolded a couple of parts for emphasis:

The scene at the bedside of the dying President has been described in the Press, and as the news swept around the earth, all the children of men, in all the civilized world, wept with those about his couch. That death-bed scene will never be forgotten. It was surrounded by his Cabinet ministers, all of whom were bathed in tears, not excepting Mr. Stanton, the War Secretary, with iron will and nerve, who when informed by Surgeon-General Barnes that the President could not live until morning exclaimed: 'Oh, no, General! no, no', and immediately sat down at his bedside and wept like a little child.

"Senator Sumner was seated on the right of the President's couch near the head, holding the right hand of the President in his own. He was sobbing like a tender woman with his head bowed down almost to the pillow of the bed on which the President was lying."

At twenty-two minutes past seven, the President passed away and Mr. Stanton exclaimed, "Now he belongs to the ages." Besides the persons named, there were about the deathbed his wife and son, Vice-President Johnson, all the other members of the Cabinet with the exception of Mr. Seward, Generals Halleck, Meigs, Farnsworth, Augur, and Ladd, Rev. Dr. Gurley, Schuyler Colfax, Governor Farwell, Judges Cartter and Otto, Surgeon-General Barnes, Drs. Stone, Crane and Leals, Major John Hay, and Maunsell B. Field.


There was no Gen. Ladd on the Union side during the entire civil war. "Gen. Ladd" is the copyist's mistake in transcribing, it's presumably supposed to be "Todd" as in Brig. Gen. John Blair Smith Todd who was by then actually the Congressional delegate from Dakota territory. Gen. Farnsworth was also a Congressman at this time as well. Todd was a relative of Mary. Newspaper accounts from the time confirm Todd was there but make no mention of of a "Ladd". The person typing up the account presumably mistook a cursive "To" for an "La". They also mistyped Dr. Leale's name as "Leals", mistaking the "e" for an "s".

Also one (or some) of Maj. Ladd's grandchildren paid for this account of his life in a 1920 History of Lowell, Mass:

https://archive.org/details/historyoflow...0/mode/2up

It makes no mention of Maj. Ladd travelling to Washington from Elmira and somehow ending up at Lincoln's bedside. Since Ladd's paid the publisher to include a biography of Ladd and his son to be included in the book, it makes little sense to leave out a mention of Ladd being at Lincoln's bedside when he died in their hagiographic account of his life if his family knew about it.

[RJNorton]

Thanks to Steve W. for sending this article. It's from page 1 of the April 16, 1865, edition of the New York Herald. It mentions Gen. Todd being at the side of Lincoln on his death bed.

[RJNorton]

Thanks to both Steves for looking into Ladd.

I have another one. Absolutely none of my Lincoln assassination books list James Wormley being present at Lincoln's deathbed. But I include a newspaper article that says he was there at the Petersen House the night Lincoln died.

Was he really there?

Wormley was the owner of Wormley's Hotel in Washington.

The article is from The Morning News, Wilmington, Delaware, December 25, 1884.