Trivial Trivia - taking trivia to new levels

[J. Beckert]

I'm wondering if I'm confusing this with a hat maker presenting Lincoln with a new hat in N.Y., so last guess. Nicolay?

[RJNorton]

Nope, Joe, it's not Nicolay.

Hint #3: For a brief period this person tended to Old Bob before the Lincolns departed for Washington.

[Laurie Verge]

Lincoln's man servant that I can't remember the name of? I think he also led Old Bob in the Springfield funeral???

[J. Beckert]

Billy the barber?

[RJNorton]

Good enough, Laurie. It was Lincoln's valet, William H. Johnson. However, he died in 1864, so he was not alive for the Springfield funeral.

James Cornelius has an article on Johnson here.

[L Verge]

This is a question posed to our two super sleuths who seem to find assassination-related artifacts everywhere:

Rich and Jim - A tourism website for weird museums says that the Mutter Museum has a growth taken from John Wilkes Booth. What is it? The piece of thoracic tissue? The carbuncle removed by Dr. May that inspired the phrase "Mark of the Scalpel?" Are they both the same thing? If it is the carbuncle, why would Dr, May have kept it?

Blaine - Feel free to chime in on this also as our team physician here (or any other doctors we may have in the house).

[Gene C]

Speaking of super sleuths, there was a Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", but I suppose that's not what you had in mind.

[RJNorton]

Laurie, I originally had it listed as a piece of thoracic tissue on my website, but in 2002 I received the following message from the late Gretchen Worden:

*********************************

"My attention was just drawn to your website, and I have one small correction to make. We now believe that the piece of John Wilkes Booth in the Mutter Museum was not from his thorax (though that is what was on the original label), but tissue possibly cleaned off the cervical vertebrae when they were prepared for the Army Medical Museum, now the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

The reasons why we think this may be so are: 1) an X-ray examination of the tissue showed that there are fragments of bone in the specimen that may have been from the shattered vertebrae, and there is also a single black hair in the bottle; 2) the post mortem examination of Booth seemed to focus on the area of bullet damage and the broken leg, rather than being a complete autopsy in the traditional sense, and it seemed unlikely that tissue would have been taken from his chest since there is no evidence that it was part of the post mortem.

I wrote this up in an article called "Is It The Body Of John Wilkes Booth?", published in the Transactions & Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1994. I would be glad to send you a copy if you like."

Gretchen Worden, Director
Mutter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia
19 South 22nd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103-3097

[BettyO]

I have seen somewhere (will have to remember where I saw it) that the "material" at the Mutter Museum was described simply as "tissue" from the body of John Wilkes Booth - it did not state thorax....

[L Verge]

So what is this "growth" that they reportedly have from JWB?

[Jim Garrett]

(04-25-2013 06:47 PM)L Verge Wrote:  So what is this "growth" that they reportedly have from JWB?

I believe that Rich "visited" with the growth a couple of years ago. He was informed photos were not allowed.............

[Rsmyth]

The fact that photos are not allowed only slowed me down somewhat. The info that Roger posted is correct.

[Laurie Verge]

So it boils down to them not having a "growth" from JWB, but rather tissue from the site of his mortal wound?

[RJNorton]

In 1832 Lincoln ran for the Illinois State Legislature for the first time. He lost. Exactly how many votes did he receive?

[ReignetteC]

(05-14-2013 04:53 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  In 1832 Lincoln ran for the Illinois State Legislature for the first time. He lost. Exactly how many votes did he receive?

277?