A quick note from Thomas Jones

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Dave Taylor

In this undated mini-letter (or lengthy autograph), Thomas Austin Jones succinctly attests to his role in hiding the aiding the fugitives.

“Captn Williams offered the reward on Tuesday 18th of April 1865 in Brawner’s Hotel in Port Tobacco,Md.And on the 22d of April 1865 at night I took Booth and Harold to a point on thePotomac River, known as Dent’s Meadow, in Charles County, Md.

And from thence landed them on a Point at the mouth of Machodoc Chreek, in King George County, Va.

Respectfully yours

T. A. Jones”

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Manhunt: The Exhibit

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Dave Taylor

In 2001, James Swanson and Daniel Weinberg released their book, Lincoln’s Assassins: Their Trial and Execution.  This coffee table sized book by Swanson, a D.C. attorney, and Weinberg, owner of the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago, contains both men’s impressive collection of artifacts, documents, and images involving Lincoln’s assassination.  In addition, the pair found other noteworthy items in other private collection and museums to include in this visual tour of the assassination.  It is a truly wonderful picture book that should be in every assassination library.  In 2006, James Swanson once again entered the spotlight when he released his assassination book, Manhunt: The Twelve Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer.  The book became a New York Times bestseller due to its appealing, fiction-like writing style.  The book’s popularity led to a temporary exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.  In this exhibit, many of Swanson’s artifacts were on display.  The exhibit has since closed, but I was able to visit it in May of 2009.  For those of you who were not able to see it, here are some of the highlights:

Click the images to enlarge them

Advertising for the exhibit outside the Newseum.

The "Jumbotron" inside the Newseum cycled through a taped message about the exhibit.

The room containing the Manhunt exhibit.

The room had wonderfully bright displays of each of the conspirators...

...and the events.

Some of the artifacts displayed included the last photograph of Lincoln.

Prints and photographs of Booth.

A key and brick from the Old Capitol prison which housed Mary Surratt along with many other witnesses and suspects.

A broadside about Booth's death.

A photograph and brick from Booth's favorite hotel, The National. The Newseum now occupies the same site where the National once stood.

An original (not a later reprint, I confirmed) playbill from Our American Cousin.

A period map showing D.C. and Booth's escape route.

While a little small for my liking (we could always use more assassination artifacts, after all), the exhibit did a great job showcasing Swanson’s book and collection.

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A bit of levity…

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Dave Taylor

The real reason it took Booth and Herold two tries to reach Virginia

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You want a piece of me?

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Dave Taylor

Have an issue with tissue?  If so, then I recommend against you visiting the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.  Founded in 1849 by the Philadelphia College of Physicians, it houses one of the premiere collections of medical oddities and specimens.  Perfectly preserved skulls, fetuses, and the most enlarged body parts you’ve ever seen, cover the walls from ceiling to floor.  Among the collection of plasticized parts, lies a piece of the assassin himself.

During his autopsy on April 27th 1865, the vertebrae through which the fatal bullet traveled were removed from John Wilkes Booth.  Those vertebrae now lie in the National Museum of Health and Medicine.  The tissue surrounding and scraped from those vertebrae, on the other hand, is exhibited at the Mütter Museum.

Tissue taken from John Wilkes Booth during his autopsy aboard the monitor Montauk.

While documented as a “piece of the thorax of John Wilkes Booth” and still labeled as such, it is more likely tissue from Booth’s neck.  No mention is made of Booth’s thoracic cavity in the brief autopsy records.  The doctors performing the autopsy focused almost exclusively on his broken leg and neck wound.

So, if you’re ever in Philadelphia and you want to observe the medical macabre, stop on in the Mütter Museum and catch a look at a piece of the assassin.

References:
The best resource about Booth’s autopsy is Roger Norton’s unparalleled Lincoln Assassination Research Site.  It was Mr. Norton who first learned that the Mütter specimen from Booth was probably not his thorax but tissue from his vertebrae.

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Edward John Collis

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Dave Taylor

In a brushy outlying area of the St. Ignatius Cemetery in Port Tobacco, Maryland, there is a weather worn grave marker:

While extremely faded from time and neglect, the name on the marker and some information can still be gleaned from it.  From this picture we can make out something along the lines of:

“Sacred
To the Memory of
Edward John Collis
Once of Angelo
Stourbridge, England
Who Died at Bel Alton
April 21, 1895
Aged 52 Years
Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.
They rest from their labours and their works do follow them.”

The outlying location of this grave is a wonderful metaphor for this man’s outlying connection to the assassination story.

Edward John Collis was born at Wollaston Hall in Worcestershire, England on March 28, 1843.  His father was a deputy Lord Lieutenant in Worcestershire.  On July 9th, 1867, Edward married Elizabeth Louis Swann in England.  An educated man, Mr. Collis worked in mines as an engineer.  He and his wife came to America in 1887 for pleasure and health.  Working in the mines caused Mr. Collis to contract rheumatic fever.  Finding the American climate and way of life to his liking, Mr. Collis and his wife bought property and settled in Bel Alton, Maryland in 1890.  Though being a newcomer to the area, Mr. Collis engrained himself in local functions and positions in Charles county.  The Englishman who took well to the Southern Maryland way of life passed away in 1895, five short years after moving in.  His cause of death was reported in the papers to have been from epilepsy and nephritis (inflammation of the kidneys).

This gent’s connection to the Lincoln assassination is as follows.  During the short time Mr. Collis was in Maryland, he lived in a particular house.  That house was built on the land where Thomas A. Jones first met John Wilkes Booth and David Herold as they were hidden in the pine thicket.  In Thomas Jones’ book, J. Wilkes Booth, written in 1893, Jones cites, “An Englishman, named Collis, now occupies a house built upon the exact spot where I first beheld the fugitives.”

A drawing of the Collis house taken from Thomas Jone’s book.

In 1865, everyone referred to the land where the pair hid as Captain Michael Stone Robertson’s land, even though the good captain had been killed in 1862 at the Battle of Harrisonburg.  Regardless, after the pair arrived at Colonel Samuel Cox’s home, Rich Hill, Cox had his overseer hide the men in the pine thicket to avoid detection.  He then sent his son, Samuel Cox, Jr. to fetch Thomas Jones.  Jones agreed to help the pair and, over the next several days, he brought them food, water, and supplies.  When the soldiers cleared the area, Jones put them on a boat across the Potomac.  Before any of that occurred, however, Jones met Booth and Herold right where Edward Collis’ house stood.

Today, it is believed that original Collis house still stands as part of this modern house:

While Edward John Collis only has a passing connection with the history of the assassination, he is still worthy of a mention. When Collis died in 1895, one of his pallbearers was Samuel Cox, Jr.  This means that Samuel Cox, Jr. not only helped direct Thomas Jones to the spot where he found the conspirators, but he also laid to rest a man who made his home there.

References:
Abstracts from the Port Tobacco Times and Charles County Advertiser – Vol 6 by Roberta J. Wearmouth
J. Wilkes Booth by Thomas A. Jones
The wonderful Mr. Joe Gleason who showed me this grave and house.

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Researching with Primary Sources

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Dave Taylor

When we want to learn more about the Lincoln assassination, the first place we all start is with the books.  American Brutus by Michael Kauffman, Blood on the Moon by Edward Steers, and Manhunt by James Swanson, seem to be the top three choices for those starting off.  While many other wonderful books have been written on the subject, these three provide the most up to date research and findings about the assassination.  What makes these books the best modern writings on the subject, is their use of primary sources.  The chapter notes in American Brutus, for example, are filled with new discoveries and sources ignored or unknown to previous writers.  That is why, when looking to do research into the Lincoln assassination, it is crucial to use primary sources.  Ten years ago, this would have meant a visit to the National Archives to look through rolls of microfilm.  Today, however, some of the best primary sources have been published as standalone books or digitized.  This post explores using two such resources in tandem to aid in researching and learning about our great American drama.

One source that is absolutely necessary for any serious research into the assassination is, The Lincoln Assassination: The Evidence by William Edwards and Edward Steers.  This book contains practically all of the paper materials involved with the investigation of Lincoln’s murder.  The 1400 page book is filled with witness statements about nearly every aspect of the assassination.  William Edwards transcribed the book one microfilmed page at a time from the original evidence files in the National Archives.  Then, teamed with Edward Steers, they indexed, categorized and annotated the piece.  The sheer work involved in making this book is astounding, and we all owe the authors a sincere thank you for producing it.  While the size of the book increases the price tag (it can be bought cheap for $99 through the Surratt House Museum), it is worth every penny for the convenience and treasures that lay inside.  My copy of The Evidence, sits right next to my computer within arm’s reach, and I reference it practically every day.  The Evidence is not only vastly helpful because it saves me a trip to D.C. to look at microfilm, but it also has an index, allowing me to quickly and easily find the material I am looking for.

Another great resource to find the same materials is through the website, Fold3.com.  Previously known as Footnote.com until a recent merger with Ancestry.com, Fold3 provides millions of digitized historical documents.  Their partnerships with institutions like the Library of Congress and the National Archives, have allowed them to digitize and present pieces of history to a wider audience than ever before.  Most beneficial for our interest are the Lincoln Assassination Papers hosted by them.  Fold3 has digitized all of the microfilmed pages included in The Evidence and more.  Even better, while most of the site requires a paid membership to view and save images of the documents, the Lincoln Assassination Papers are free to view and (with a free account) free to save.  While Fold3 is a wonderful way to look at the images of the documents themselves, the pages have not been transcribed in any way.  Individual members can go through and annotate and transcribe names and places, but a full digital transcription of these hand-written documents seems unlikely to ever happen.  That is where The Evidence book comes in.

There have been many times where I have found it to be helpful to see the original document that I found in The Evidence.  Unfortunately, the naming used on Fold3 does not match with the original reel and frame number cited in The Evidence.  That is why I created a key that allows me to use the citation in The Evidence to find the actual document on Fold3.  Here is that key:

Click to Enlarge

Looks confusing, huh?  Let me show you how to use it.

First, after you find the statement you want to see in The Evidence, you have to look for the reel and frame citation.  For example, this is the header and citation for a letter written by Richard Baynham Garrett:

This tells me that this letter is found on reel 7: frames 77 – 79.  Then we have to use the key I posted above.  I spilt the key up into three columns.  The first column gives the name that Fold3.com has for its different sections.  The second column gives the reel and frame numbers that correspond to that section.  The third column gives examples of frame numbers from The Evidence and matching page numbers on Fold3.com.

So, the Garrett letter was located on reel 7 in The Evidence.  On Fold3, reel 7 is named “Unregistered letters received by Col. H. L. Burnett” so we’d choose that one to view.  Finding the correct page number is next.  If you would click on page 77 under the “Unregistered letters received by Col. H. L. Burnett” reel you would not find Richard Garrett’s letter but instead a letter from J. L. McPhail.  I have the following in my key under this reel:
25:44 (+19)
91:114 (+23)
This means that frame 25 in The Evidence is on page 44 on Fold3, and that frame 91 in The Evidence is on page 114 on Fold3.  After each I placed the differences between them.  Since I’m looking for frame 77 according to The Evidence, this is telling me that I need to add between 19 and 23 to find the correct page on Fold3.  You’ll still have to do a bit of searching to track down the exact page, but this should make it much easier.  Garrett’s letter can be found on page 99 on Fold3, a difference of 22 pages.

One important thing to note is that two of the reels, (Reel 1 and Reel 3) were digitized backwards.  The last page of the reel is page 1 in these ones.  For the Reel 1 (Letters AND Telegrams AND Register of Letters AND Record Book And Endorsement Book) this is alright because the telegrams have page numbers at the top that make it easy to follow.  Reel 3 is harder to navigate, but hopefully this key will give you some idea of where to start in it.

Used together, these two resources, The Evidence and Fold3.com, are a Boothie’s dream.  Publishing and digitizing these primary sources allows all Boothies to read, learn, and discover more than ever before.  As companies like Google, Fold3, and Ancestry continue on their digitalization efforts, more discoveries and insights about the Lincoln assassination will be found.

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Welcome to scenic Neck Quarter, Virginia!

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Dave Taylor

Not familiar with the name? I don’t blame you. Neck Quarter was the former name of a parcel of land located in King George County, Virginia owned by Nathaniel Hooe. In December of 1845, Hooe sold this tract of land to Dr. Richard H. Stuart. His wife subsequently renamed Neck Quarter to its modern name, Cleydael.

Dr. Stuart was one of most prominent doctors and wealthiest men in the county. Before buying Cleydael’s land, Dr. Stuart owned land and a house eight miles away near the coast of the Potomac called, “Cedar Grove”. While Dr. Stuart and his family enjoyed Cedar Grove, the hot, muggy, summers near the Potomac proved unpleasant with cases of malaria being common. Upon purchasing Neck Quarter from Nathaniel Hooe, Dr. Stuart began construction on a summer home. This summer home utilized an unusual design that created cross breezes to naturally cool the house during the hot summers. When the Civil War began, Dr. Stuart and his family left Cedar Grove and began residing at Cleydael year round. Their home on the Potomac was deemed too dangerous as the threat of Union shelling was a very real one. During the war, Cleydael would house General Robert E. Lee’s daughters (cousins to Mrs. Stuart) when they were forced to leave their home at Arlington. Dr. Stuart continued his practice from the safety of this home. An office with a waiting room, and easy passage between it and Dr. Stuart’s bedroom, allowed the good doctor to continue to service patients even late at night.

On the night of April 23, 1865, John Wilkes Booth and David Herold were led to Dr. Stuart’s by Confederate agent, William Bryant. The doctor, having heard about Lincoln’s assassination was suspicious of the men and refused to let them stay. He relented to giving the men a meal before sending them on to the cabin of William Lucas, a free black who lived nearby. Booth would later write a poison pen thank you letter to Dr. Stuart for his “generosity”. While Dr. Stuart would spend a month in prison, it was this letter that proved his innocence and refusal to help Booth.

So where does the name Cleydael come from anyway? Mrs. Stuart’s maiden name was Julia Calvert. She was the granddaughter of Henri Stier, a wealthy Belgian baron. Her grandfather’s home was Château de Cleydael near Antwerp, Belguim:

When the French army invaded Antwerp in 1794, the baron and his family fled to America, leaving Cleydael behind. Mrs. Stuart renamed their summer residence Cleydael in honor of her ancestral home.

Recently, there was much worry over the future of Cleydael. The previous owner passed away without a will and with debts to be paid. Despite a historical easement on the house, there was a real chance the house and property would be sold and demolished. Luckily, such a crisis was averted when the house was recently bought by a couple committed to restoring and retelling the history of Cleydael.

Resources:
Cleydael’s 1937 Virginia Historical Inventory Project record
Cleydael’s 1986 National Register of Historic Places Nomination form (.pdf)

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To have Peace…

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Dave Taylor

The following letter was received by the Department of the Secretary of State, on April 23rd, 1865:

“To the Honorable Secretary of State

Dear Sir,

In looking over some old papers yesterday my eye came in contact with the enclosed extract which under the existing state of affairs I thought was worthy of being pointed out to you especially as the state (Ala) is now in our possession and the authors of the proposition can be hunted out and brought to justice ever provided they are innocent of the murder.

I have the honor to be your Obt. Servant,
Henry L. Greiner”

Attached to this letter was this extract from the Selma Dispatch:

“One Million Dollars Wanted, to have Peace by the 1st of March. – If the citizens of the Southern Confederacy will furnish me with the cash or good securities for the sum of one million dollars, I will cause the lives of Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward and Andrew Johnson to be taken by the first of March next.  This will give us peace, and satisfy the world that cruel tyrants can not live in the “land of  liberty.”  If this is not accomplished nothing will be claimed beyond the sum of fifty thousand dollars, in advance, which is supposed to be necessary to reach and slaughter the three villains.
I will give, myself, one thousand dollars towards this patriotic purpose.
Every one wishing to contribute will address box X, Cahaba, Alabama.  X.
December 1, 1864″

The author of this advertisement was George W. Gayle, a lawyer from Cahaba, Alabama.  Gayle ran this advertisement in the Selma Dispatch four or five times to express his, and his neighbors’, digust and hatred for the sixteenth president and his cabinet.  We can tell his threat was not a real one due to his million dollar fee.  Such a sum would be unobtainable in the war ravaged South.

While extravagant and crass, Gayle demonstrates the feeling that Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant.  This idea was shared by many others who watched a war between brothers rage on.  One man who shared this view was John Wilkes Booth.

Gayle’s violent expression of disgust against Lincoln would come back to haunt him.  After the government received the above note and newspaper clipping, Gayle was hunted down and arrested on May 24.  The 57-year-old lawyer had no real connection to John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln’s assassination,  but the government used him as a warning to all of those who spoke ill of the late President.  Not only was his advertisement and character involved in the Trial of the Conspirators in 1865, but, he was still trying to clear his name in court as of December, 1866.

The people of the Confederacy learned quickly from Mr. Gayle’s example.  Those who agreed with what Booth had done censored themselves to protect themselves.  Many only committed their approval in the form of diary and journal entries.  To learn more about the how Southerners viewed Lincoln’s assassination, I recommend the book, When the Bells Tolled for Lincoln: Southern Reaction to the Assassination by Carolyn L. Harrell.  This book is a wonderful look at how varied the perception of Lincoln’s death was across the Southern states.

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