Lincoln's Blood Relics-- Part 7: Lock of His Hair

Within an hour of the assassination, Mary Lincoln summoned Mary Jane Welles, wife of Secretary of the Navy Welles, to the Peterson House.  She was one of her few friends in Washington.  They had bonded over sadness: In 1862, Mary Jane had helped nurse 11-year-old Willie Lincoln until he died of typhoid fever; the next year, the Welleses lost their 3-year-old son to diphtheria.

On the morning of April 15, Lincoln's death room emptied of mourners except for one, Lincoln's Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who cut a generous lock of the president's hair and sealed it in a plain white envelope.  He knew to give it to Mrs. Welles.  he signed his name on the envelope then addressed it "For Mrs. Welles."

When she received it later that day, she inscribed it herself: "Lock of Mr. Lincoln's hair April 15, 1865, M.J.W."  She mounted the lock in an oval gold frame, along with dried flowers she collected from Lincoln's coffin at the April 19 White House funeral.

This isn't the only surviving lock of Lincoln's hair.  Mary Lincoln claimed one, as did several of the doctors present at the Peterson House or at his autopsy.  Others were also taken and it is a wonder that he reached his grave with any hair at all.

"But the Stanton/Welles lock, with its unparalleled provenance and interwoven tales of love and loss, is perhaps the most evocative one of all."

I Was Completely Unaware of This Story.  Wow!  --Old Secesh

Lincoln's Blood Relics-- Part 6: Lincoln's Deathbed

At 7:22 and ten seconds a.m., after an all-night vigil, Abraham Lincoln died in a backroom at the Peterson House on a bed that was too small for him.  Doctors had to lay him diagonally atop the mattress.  Soldiers wrapped his naked body in an American flag and put him in a plain pine box to remove him.

After they took him to the White House, sheets, pillows, towels and a coverlet lay on the bed, still wet with the president's blood.

Two Peterson House boarders, brothers Henry and Julius Ulke, one a photographer and the other an artist, set up a tripod camera and, with the morning sun flooding the hallway from the front door all the way to the back of the room, photographed the scene.

I understand the bed was at the Chicago Historical Society at one time.  Maybe still is.

What About the Bed?  --Old Secesh

Lincoln's Blood Relics-- Part 1: Almost Arrested for His Lincoln Vigil

From the March 2015 Smithsonian Magazine "The Blood Relics" by James L. Swanson.

Big-time Abraham Lincoln Assassination buff James L. Swanson says that every April 14th, the place where the assassination and death took place "is one of the loneliest historical sites in America."  He's been making pilgrimages there for more than 25 years, his first in 1987.

He was sure like-minded people would come to the site and surely te National Park service would do something.

But, nothing transpired ever in all those years.

Seeing the lack of interest the first time inspired him to write his book "Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer."

But, back in 2013, his vigil almost got him arrested as he sat on the steps of the Peterson House across the street from Ford's Theatre.  A guard from there yelled at him to get off the steps, "That's private property.  I'll call the police."  He explained why he was there and went back only to have ten minutes later two park service police cars pull up.  "Lots of men sit on those steps and urinate on the house," one policeman said.

There was more discussion and the park police finally left.

Things, however, were different this past April 14th as the Ford's Theatre Society and National Park Service are planning a big to-do for Tenth Street.

--Old Secesh