From the Nov. 14th Washington Post "To arrive in Michigan's Henry Ford Museum, Lincoln's fateful chair took a circuitous journey" by John Kelly.
You'd think this chair, the one Abraham Lincoln was sitting in at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865 while viewing "Our American Cousin" when John Wilkes Booth shot him, would be in the Smithsonian in DC or at least back in the theater, but it is now at the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan.
An interesting story as to how it got there.
Joe Simms, an employee of the theater, had moved his boss' plushly upholstered chair into what had become the presidential box a short time before the event. That owner was manager Harry Clay Ford.
The War Department seized the theater after the assassination. Guards were posted on 10th Street and outside the box.
On April 22nd, Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana ordered the chair removed after finding out souvenir hunters had been taking pieces off it.
In 1867, the War Department sent it to the Department of the Interior along with the stovepipe hat Lincoln wore that night to be put on display at the Patent Office building where it remained for two years.
More to Come. --Old B-Runner
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