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
No comments:
Post a Comment