Recreating Lincoln's Columbus Ohio Funeral

On April 29, 2008, the city of Columbus, Ohio held a recreation of its funeral for Abraham Lincoln. An exact replica of Lincoln's coffin was placed in the Ohio Statehouse, just as the original was on the same date in 1865. Civil War re-enactors stood guard over the replica to make the scene authentic to the original.

According to the article in today's Columbus Dispatch newspaper, more than 50,000 people filed through the Statehouse rotunda on April 29, 1865 to pay their respects to the fallen nation's leader. This was in just 6 1/2 hours of viewing, so the turnout was roughly 8,000 viewers per hour. Impressive, to be sure.

Columbus was just one location of many other cities which held public funerals and viewing for Abraham Lincoln. Massive displays were held in New York, Buffalo, Albany, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, and of course, Springfield, Illinois. A second Ohio city, Cleveland, was the only one which thought to hold the viewing outdoors, thus permitting an amazing 100,000 people there to pay their respects and gratitude. All told, it is estimated that 1 million people braved the elements to see Lincoln's body, attend funeral processions in the various cities, or silently watch his funeral train roll through the countryside. The nation hasn't had such massive turnouts for a fallen leader since. The customs established at these various funerals for Lincoln have since been used in services for John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and others.

An excellent resource for learning more about the Lincoln assassination and the numerous funerals held for him is the classic book "Twenty Days" originally published in 1965 for the centennial of the assassination. The book, written by Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., is a step-by-step account of the assassination, the killing of John Wilkes Booth, and fascinating photos of the funerals in the different cities. It's a must-have book for any Lincoln buff.

Another outstanding source of information about the Lincoln funeral train and it's stops along the way may be found at this webpage, part of the wonderful Abraham Lincoln Research Site. This particular page contains detailed route information of Lincoln's funeral train, the dates in each city the funerals were held, and so on. It also contains a copy of an original photo of the actual funeral procession held on April 29, 1865 in Columbus, Ohio.

John Wilkes Booth Descendants Think He Escaped

History tells us that John Wilkes Booth, the young actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln, was cornered in a barn near Port Royal, Virginia, and was shot to death on April 26, 1865. Legends have persisted ever since that date that Booth escaped and lived to an old age.

According to an article originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer and found on azcentral.com, two Booth descendants believe the legends about their infamous ancestor. Now, aided by Booth researchers and historians, the two sisters are close to obtaining DNA tests which just might prove (or not) the legends of Booth's survival to be factual.

Genetic samples purported to be those of Booth are preserved in both Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. and could be compared against those known for sure to be of his brother, the famous actor Edwin Booth. Genetic material from Edwin is preserved in New York, New York.

It should be noted that the overwhelming majority of Lincoln experts don't buy into the theory of Booth's escape, as there is at this point absolutely no proof of any kind to support such a claim. Indeed, Edward Steers Jr., the author of "Blood On The Moon," the definitive study of Lincoln's assassination, doesn't even include this theory of Booth's survival in his latest book, "Lincoln Legends, Myths, Hoaxes, and Confabulations Associated With Our Greatest President."

It will be interesting to find out the results if and when the DNA testing is conducted. Hopefully, it will prove once and for all that John Wilkes Booth was given the ultimate justice for his heinous crime.

New Lincoln Memorial For Indiana

From the Fort Wayne, Indiana Journal Gazette comes a story about a new memorial to Abraham Lincoln. The memorial will be installed near his homestead in Indiana, where he lived from 1816 to 1830. A Fort Wayne team has been given a grant of $300,000 by the Indiana Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission to build and sculpt the memorial, which will be a new addition to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial.

The new memorial will consist of a circular plaza with granite obelisks marking significant events of Lincoln's life. The illustration I've included is an artist's concept of the memorial's appearance.

This new memorial is to be installed in 2009, the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth.

Statues Of Old Abe Are Rejected

From the April 19, 2008 edition of the Lincoln Courier (Lincoln, Illinois) newspaper comes a story about how donated statues of Old Abe have been rejected for display in the local courthouse.

Seems that Mr. Lester Van Bibber and his wife commissioned two larger-than-life statues of Abe out of solid granite and wanted to donate them to the tourism bureau of Logan County, Illinois. One statue was meant to be displayed on the third floor of the Logan County courthouse, but when it was discovered that each 6'6" statue weighs 1200 pounds, it was rejected as being too heavy. Another statue was supposed to be donated to the Postville Courthouse State Historic Site, a replica of the courthouse where Lincoln practiced law. But that offer was rejected by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.

The Van Bibbers are extremely disappointed and blame officials for rejecting the statues. After seeing the photo of the one statue, I'd have to say I don't blame the officials. It bears about as much resemblance to Lincoln as a bad Lincoln impersonator does. Seems to me that the money would have much better spent establishing funds for scholarships or perhaps for an interpretive exhibit about Lincoln's work within Logan County.

Lincoln Assassination Letter To Be Donated To Museum

Here's an interesting little story about a Greeley, Colorado family which has possessed a letter which contains an eyewitness account of the Lincoln assassination on April 14, 1865. The family has owned the letter since the 1930's, when the letter was found in an old trunk.

The letter, written in 1897 by Ohio congressman James Morris, gives a detailed account of how the shooting interrupted the play. It also quotes John Wilkes Booth as having said "Sic Semper Tyrannis" (Thus Always To Tyrants) on stage after the shooting before making his escape.

The letter will be donated this week to the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. It's admirable that the family would do this, because they could certainly earn a few thousand dollars from selling it. Now the letter will be available for everyone to enjoy and research. The Museum has authenticated the letter. It would be interesting to know if Congressman Morris was truly at Ford's Theater that night or simply "remembered" being there.

Bad Lincoln "History"

Bad history is all around us, as documented in the book "Lies Across America" by James W. Loewen. Examples include a small town in Texas which claims that it's the site of the true first flight, never mind what we've read about the Wright Brothers in Kittyhawk, North Carolina. Another example is the Christopher Columbus statue in the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus which perpetuates the myth that until Columbus sailed, everyone thought the Earth was flat.

But now I've seen everything. Tomorrow, April 12, 2008 marks the opening in North Carolina of something called "The Bostic Lincoln Center Museum" which continues the unproven claim that Abraham Lincoln was actually born near the little town of Bostic in Rutherford County, North Carolina. Various people have tried to make the case for over 100 years now that Lincoln was born there, the illegitimate son of Nancy Hanks. Never mind that this claim is based on hearsay, oral traditions, and local lore without a single shred of evidence. The website for the "museum" in Bostic provides various links to other websites attempting to prove that Lincoln was really a North Carolinian.

A while back, I posted on this blog about the recent book "Lincoln Legends, Myths, Hoaxes, and Confabulations Associated With Our Greatest President," authored by Dr. Edward Steers, Jr., one of the leading Lincoln scholars. Chapter 2 of this book, simply titled "Lincoln's Father" describes in great detail this long-time claim about Lincoln, his parentage, and his place of birth. He includes research about Thomas Lincoln, Nancy Hanks, a man named Abraham Enloe (supposedly Lincoln's real father), wedding licenses, and so on. It's very interesting and enlightening.

Steers' conclusion? "While there may have been a woman named Nancy Hanks who lived in western North Carolina in the early years of the 19th century, and while she may have given birth to a baby boy fathered by a man named Abraham Enloe, neither the mother nor the baby had any relationship to Nancy Hanks Lincoln and her son, Abraham Lincoln." In his opinion, people who claim otherwise, that Lincoln was born illegitimately in North Carolina, do so to somehow stain Lincoln's place in history.

Sounds about right to me. I'd believe the conclusions of Dr. Steers over some "museum" in the hills of North Carolina. No one who is truly knowledgeable about Abraham Lincoln will buy this myth which persists to this day. I hesitated to even post about this "Lincoln Center Museum" for fear of partially legitimizing it, but I chose to do so to illustrate that people should not believe everything they read or everything they are told. We all need to be aware of bad history, and this "Bostic Lincoln Center" is one of the worst examples I've yet seen.

Pennsylvania Museum Displays Lincoln Assassination Relic

The main goal of this blog is to help educate people about the nation's 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. I never cease to be surprised by just how much additional knowledge I have personally gained about him since I started the blog back in November 2007. The learning continues. Just today, I stumbled upon the story of the "Abraham Lincoln Flag," which supposedly was used at Ford's Theater to cradle Lincoln's head after he was shot on April 14, 1865. I had never heard of this flag, which is on display at the obscure Pike County Historical Society in Millford, Pennsylvania. Here is the story behind the flag.

After the shooting, pandemonium reigned in the theater. Doctors rushed to Lincoln's side to tend his fatal injury, but there were also others present in the presidential box. One was Miss Laura Keene, the star of that night's play, "Our American Cousin." Keene cradled Lincoln's head in her lap for a few minutes in an attempt to at least provide him with some comfort. But then the doctors wanted Lincoln laid flat on the floor of the box so they could examine his wound. This is where the Lincoln Flag comes into the story.

It seems that a gentleman named Thomas Gourlay, an actor with the theater and a part-time stage manager reached over the presidential box, grabbed one of the American flags, and placed it under Lincoln's head. After Lincoln was moved to the Petersen House across the street, where he died the next morning at 7:22 a.m., Gourlay kept the flag until his death in the 1880's. He passed it on to his daughter, who in turn passed it on to her son, who finally donated it to the Pike County Historical Society in 1954.

The flag was basically unknown to the "outside" world until the 1960's when famous Lincoln scholar Edward Steers (author of "Blood On The Moon" among many other books about Lincoln) happened to stop at the museum and learned about the legend of the flag. He in turn wrote an article about it and the flag became famous, at least within the Lincoln community.

Scientific research done in 1996 seemingly confirmed the authenticity of the flag. The red dye is natural, not synthetic, for example. Synthetic dyes were not invented until the 20th century. The blood stain still visible on the flag is in a pattern of coming into contact with a bleeding human. If it had been forged, the forger most likely would've splattered blood on it.

The reader may click on the link in the opening paragraph of this posting to read more about the history of this flag. An additional article here talks about how interest in the flag is increasing with the approaching bicentennial of Lincoln's birth. The Lincoln Flag is still on display at the museum.