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THE STRANGE AND EERIE EVENTS THAT CAME IN THE YEARS AFTER LINCOLN'S ASSASSINATION!
http://members.aol.com/RVSNorton/Lincoln.html

Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth's brother, died on June 7, 1893. Two
days later, at the very moment Edwin's casket was being carried from
the Little Church Around the Corner in New York City, all 3 floors of
Ford's Theatre collapsed killing 22 people and injuring 68 others. At
the time Ford's was being used as a storehouse for War Department
records.

Boston Corbett, the soldier who shot John Wilkes Booth, went berserk
during a Tuesday, February 15, 1887, meeting of the Kansas State
Legislature. He was arrested, declared insane, and sent to the Topeka
Asylum for the Insane. He escaped the next year.

The young couple (Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris) who attended Our
American Cousin with the Lincolns got married on July 11, 1867. The
couple had three children. Rathbone suffered from "dyspepsia" or
indigestion and severe mood swings. He was probably taking an opiate
that could be purchased over the counter in the 19th century. In 1882
Rathbone was appointed to the post of U.S. Consul General to Germany.
On December 23, 1883, Rathbone went berserk. He tried to kill the
children, then shot and stabbed his wife to death, and finally
stabbed himself. When the police arrived, Rathbone mumbled, "Who
could have done this to my darling wife?" and went on about
people "hiding behind the pictures on the wall." He spent the rest of
his life in an asylum for the criminally insane in Hildesheim,
Germany. (The children were sent to live with Clara's brother,
William Harris and his family). While in the asylum Rathbone
maintained that the walls were hollow and contained a spray apparatus
which blew dust and gas on him causing headaches and chest pain. He
died on August 14th, 1911, at the age of 73. He was buried in Germany
in the city cemetery at Hannover/Engeohde. As time passed, the
cemetery management checked out lots with no recent burials and no
correspondence indicating family interest. It was decided that
Rathbone's remains could be dug up and the bones disposed of.

In May, 1875, an insanity trial for Mary Todd Lincoln was held in
Chicago. The jury found Mrs. Lincoln "insane and a fit person to be
in a state hospital for the insane." Mary spent the next several
months in an asylum in Batavia, Illinois.

William A. Petersen, the German tailor in whose house the president
died, accidently took too much laudanum (a mixture of alcohol and
opium derivatives) on June 19, 1871. He was found by Washington
police on a park bench. The police took him to the station where they
tried to pump his stomach. However, it was too late, and Petersen
passed away. Petersen's wife, Anna, died exactly four months later.
The Petersens were buried in Washington in Prospect Hill Cemetery.

On November 7, 1876, a gang of ghouls tried to steal Abraham
Lincoln's body from the Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield. Their goal
was to hold the body in exchange for the release from prison of a
counterfeiter named Ben Boyd. The thieves had Lincoln's casket partly
out of the sarcophagus when detectives, who had heard of the plot,
rushed forward to stop the larceny in progress.

Robert Lincoln, the president's son, was in the White House when his
father was shot. On July 2, 1881, Robert was with President James A.
Garfield at Washington's Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station when
the president was shot by assassin Charles J. Guiteau. In his own
words, Robert reached the stricken Garfield within 15 seconds of the
shooting. Finally, on September 6, 1901, when President William
McKinley was shot by Leon F. Czolgosz at the Pan American Exposition
in Buffalo, Robert was on a train just arriving in Buffalo.

In February, 1869, President Andrew Johnson released John Wilkes
Booth's remains to the Booth family. On February 15th the pine coffin
was opened and the body identified. Booth's head was found to be
entirely detached from his body. The remains were sent to Baltimore,
and there the detached head was passed around and looked upon by
those present for the identification. Booth's third, fourth, and
fifth cervical vertebrae, which were removed during his autopsy, are
currently displayed along with several mementos from Abraham
Lincoln's autopsy (including the bullet that killed the president,
the probe used to remove the bullet, fragments of the president's
skull, hair from the president, and the blood-stained cuffs of the
lab coat worn by Dr. Edward Curtis at the autopsy) at the National
Museum of Health and Medicine at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
(Additional hair samples from Lincoln's autopsy are in the Lincoln
Room Museum in the Wills House in Gettysburg, the Lincoln Museum in
Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and the Weldon Petz Abraham Lincoln Collection,
at the Plymouth Historical Society & Museum which is located in
Plymouth, Michigan. ** An additional fragment from Booth's autopsy is
in a bottle in the Mutter Medical Museum at the College of Physicians
of Philadelphia). In October, 1994, a petition was filed in the
Circuit Court for Baltimore City to exhume Booth's remains from Green
Mount Cemetery. The petitioners were people who identified themselves
as Booth's relatives. The cemetery argued that its solemn duty was to
protect the sanctity of those interred unless there was overwhelming
evidence that the body buried there was not Booth's. Judge Joseph
H.H. Kaplan ruled that the evidence for exhumation was insufficient.
His 1996 decision was upheld by the Court of Special Appeals in
Annapolis.

In 1869 Lewis Powell's (Paine's) remains were unclaimed by his
family, and the body was buried in Graceland Cemetery near
Georgetown. In 1871 Lewis's remains were claimed by his family and
taken from Washington. Unbeknown to the Powells, Lewis's skull had
been removed by an undertaker when the body was first moved in 1869.
The skull was given to the Army Medical Museum which later sent it to
the Smithsonian. Not until January of 1992 was it re-discovered. It
was positively identified and sent to Geneva, Florida, where it was
reunited with the rest of Powell's remains in the Geneva Cemetery
during a graveside service in November of 1994.

Anna Surratt, Mary Surratt's daughter, and her lawyers had tried to
see President Andrew Johnson to plea for clemency prior to her
mother's hanging. Two men were instrumental in preventing them from
seeing the president. One was ex-Senator Preston King. On November
13, 1865, King tied a bag of bullets around his neck and committed
suicide by jumping off a ferry boat on the Hudson River.

The other man who prevented the meeting with the president was
Senator James H. Lane. On July 11, 1866, Senator Lane shot himself to
death at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

During the weeks after the assassination, Mary Todd Lincoln received
a great deal of comfort in the White House from Dr. Anson G. Henry,
an old and trusted family friend. Dr. Henry accompanied Mrs. Lincoln
back to Illinois when she left Washington in May of 1865. A few
months later, on July 30, 1865, Dr. Henry drowned when the steamer
Brother Jonathan, on which he was a passenger, sank off the coast of
northern California.

In January, 1929, the Surratt House was raided and padlocked by
federal authorities for housing large stocks of paraphernalia being
used to violate the nation's prohibition laws. During the 1970's the
house was raided on account of numbers racketeering. According to the
February, 1999, Surratt Courier, since "becoming a nice Chinese
restaurant in the 1980's, we have only heard good things...."

Several American towns apparently heard reports of Lincoln's
assassination before it actually happened. For example, George Kulzer
(1831-1912), a pioneer of Stearns County, Minnesota, told the
following story about St. Joseph, MN: "That was an eventful year,
1865. In April, an odd thing happened in St. Joseph. Early in the
morning on Wednesday, the 14th, people were horror-stricken to hear
that President Lincoln had been assassinated. No one knew how the
news had arrived, since we had no telegraph. Later we heard that Mr.
Lincoln had indeed been assassinated, but not until late in the
evening of that day. No one remembered how the news had started.
Weeks later, some of the Eastern papers heard of it and tried to
infer that the priest of St. Joseph knew of a Catholic plot against
the government and had spread the news prematurely. This was, of
course, ridiculous. Father Bruno was indignant, but some people
wanted to believe it, and many years later it would still be
whispered." Mr. Kulzer was wrong on the day of the week as the 14th
was a Friday. Manchester, New Hampshire, also received the news on
that Good Friday before the press releases were dispatched from
Washington. Also, on the afternoon of April 14, the Whig Press in
Middleton, New York, announced that Lincoln had been killed by an
assassin.

For 87 years it was thought no photographs of Mr. Lincoln in an open
coffin existed. Then, in 1952, 15 year old Ronald Rietveld (currently
Dr. Ronald Rietveld, Professor of American history at California
State University, Fullerton) of Des Moines, Iowa, discovered one
hidden away in the Illinois State Historical Library while
researching the papers of Lincoln's personal secretaries. The
photograph had been taken by photographer Jeremiah Gurney, Jr., on
April 24, 1865, as the body lay in state in City Hall in New York.
Afterwards, it was immediately confiscated by Secretary of War Edwin
Stanton and was unknown until re-discovered by Rietveld.



Illinois State Historical Library Photograph Discovered by Ronald
Rietveld
** President Theodore Roosevelt wore a ring containing a lock of
Abraham Lincoln's hair when he was inaugurated in 1905. The hair had
been cut by Dr. Charles C. Taft, one of the attending physicians the
night of the assassination. The hair was purchased by John Hay on
February 9, 1905, and was given to Roosevelt less than a month later.
In his Autobiography, Roosevelt wrote, "When I was inaugurated on
March 4, 1905, I wore a ring he (John Hay) sent me the night before,
containing the hair of Abraham Lincoln. This ring was on my finger
when the Chief Justice administered to me the oath of allegiance to
the United States."

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Knights_of_the_Golden_Circle/
 

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