{"id":6232,"date":"2014-02-17T17:14:15","date_gmt":"2014-02-17T17:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=6232"},"modified":"2021-04-21T11:11:08","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T15:11:08","slug":"i-met-abraham-lincoln-true-stories-in-historical-newspapers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/i-met-abraham-lincoln-true-stories-in-historical-newspapers.html","title":{"rendered":"I Met Abraham Lincoln: True Stories in Historical Newspapers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/em><\/strong>: Gena Philibert-Ortega is a genealogist and author of the book \u201cFrom the Family Kitchen.<\/span>\u201d In this guest blog post\u2014in honor of today being Presidents\u2019 Day\u2014Gena searches old newspapers to find amazing stories about people who were still alive in the 1930s, \u201940s and \u201950s who had met Abraham Lincoln.<\/em><\/p>\n

Did your ancestor meet a famous person? Maybe they had occasion to hear a great orator or speak with an author. Did they rub elbows with someone infamous? I\u2019m always fascinated by the history that our ancestors, even our more recent ancestors, witnessed.<\/p>\n

Do you have an ancestor who met, heard or saw Abraham Lincoln? There could be a variety of reasons a 19th century ancestor encountered the 16th president of the United States. As president during the American Civil War, Lincoln gave speeches and visited the troops so it\u2019s possible that a person living in the 1860s may have had an encounter with him.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Photo: President Abraham Lincoln, 8 November 1863, by Alexander Gardner. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But did you ever consider that some of those same people may have lived into the20th century and had occasion to tell their story about meeting Lincoln? Many Civil War soldiers or contemporaries of Lincoln would have been at least middle-aged to quite elderly when the 20th century rolled in. There were some alive at the beginning decades of the 20th century who were able to boast about meeting Lincoln.<\/p>\n

So what if we up the ante? What about people who were still alive in the mid-20th century? The chances of someone who had met or personally saw Lincoln would have dwindled by then. However, a search in GenealogyBank\u2019s Historical Newspaper Archives<\/a> shows that there were still people at that late date who could tell of meeting what many believe is the greatest president who ever lived.<\/p>\n

Samuel J. Seymour, Last Living Witness to Lincoln\u2019s Assassination<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1956 an elderly man appeared on the television game show I\u2019ve Got a Secret<\/em>. This TV show featured a celebrity panel who, when presented with a special guest, tried to guess what secret the person held. The featured guests\u2019 secrets included things that were amazing or unusual about that person. Those who stumped the panel received a cash prize. Samuel J. Seymour spent about five minutes on the show while two of the panelists asked questions that led them to guessing his secret. (A side note: while many younger readers wouldn\u2019t recognize most of the celebrities that appeared on the show, on the day of Seymour\u2019s guest spot there was a very recognizable face\u2014that of famous actress and comedian Lucille Ball\u2014who was on the panel, but she didn\u2019t get a chance to question Mr. Seymour.)<\/p>\n

Seymour was a 5-year-old boy when he was taken to Ford\u2019s Theatre on 14 April 1865\u2014the night that President Lincoln was shot. While he did not know initially that Lincoln was shot, and did not see the actual shooting, he did remember years later the fear he felt that night. He also remembered feeling concerned about the man (John Wilkes Booth) that he saw fall onto the stage. In the chaos of the moment\u2014and because he was so young\u2014Seymour didn\u2019t realize that Booth had in fact shot the President when he saw the actor suddenly leap down onto the stage.<\/p>\n

Of the lasting effect of being at Ford\u2019s Theatre that night, Mr. Seymour said: \u201c\u2026I sometimes still relive the horror of Lincoln\u2019s assassination, dozing in my rocker as an old codger like me is bound to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imagine that\u2014a man in the 1950s carrying the memory of President Lincoln\u2019s assassination!<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 7 February 1954, page 192<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can view the actual portion of this episode of I\u2019ve Got a Secret<\/em> featuring Samuel Seymour on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Richard R. Davis, Civil War Soldier<\/strong><\/p>\n

The following 1936 newspaper article, written just three years shy of Mr. Davis\u2019s 100th birthday, tells of his Civil War career and his meeting Abraham Lincoln one day when the president came and spoke to the troops. Of that talk, Mr. Davis remembered that Lincoln \u201ctold us then that we were fighting to preserve the Union of States and of our sacrifice.\u201d After speaking, Lincoln walked amongst the troops with his son.<\/p>\n

Davis recounts that when he tussled the hair of Lincoln\u2019s son the boy grinned and said: \u201cDo you think I\u2019m a child? Say, I\u2019m a pretty big fellow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Richard<\/a>
Druid (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), 1 December 1936, page 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Davis actually saw Lincoln several times, and also met other noteworthy figures of the time such as Generals Grant and Hooker. The reporter writes that it\u2019s obvious that Lincoln was a hero to Davis and that his time serving in the Civil War was a \u201chighlight of his journey along life\u2019s highways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meeting Presidential Candidate Lincoln<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because some young people who met Lincoln went on to live long lives, we do have stories of the Great Emancipator told by witnesses well after most who knew Lincoln had died. For example, Perry Green Brock\u2014who died in 1949 at the age of 105 years\u2014told of meeting candidate Lincoln in 1856 in Kentucky when he was a boy. Brock later fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War but doesn\u2019t mention what he thought of Lincoln during that time. He was quoted in the following newspaper article as saying that the South would have won if \u201cus rebels hadn\u2019t run out of shells.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Perry<\/a>
Dallas Morning News (Dallas, Texas), 24 November 1949, section III, page 6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Did your ancestor meet Abraham Lincoln or another famous person? If so, research the encounter in GenealogyBank\u2019s Historical Newspaper Archives<\/a>, then write the story and preserve it for future generations. If your ancestor did indeed meet Abraham Lincoln, please share the details about the encounter with us in the comments. We\u2019d love to hear your family story.<\/p>\n

Related Articles about Abraham Lincoln:<\/strong><\/p>\n

102 Year Old Ex-Slave Once Shook Abraham Lincoln\u2019s Hand<\/a><\/p>\n

Abraham Lincoln: The Life of a Legend Infographic<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction: Gena Philibert-Ortega is a genealogist and author of the book \u201cFrom the Family Kitchen.\u201d In this guest blog post\u2014in honor of today being Presidents\u2019 Day\u2014Gena searches old newspapers to find amazing stories about people who were still alive in the 1930s, \u201940s and \u201950s who had met Abraham Lincoln. Did your ancestor meet a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[938,453,3273,6424,422,3292,6421,465,2424,4070,2540,6420,2020,27,4818,1084,5059,6423,531,6422,6418,6419],"class_list":["post-6232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-abraham-lincoln","tag-american-civil-war","tag-booth","tag-brock","tag-civil-war","tag-davis","tag-fords-theatre","tag-historical-newspapers","tag-historical-obituaries","tag-john-wilkes-booth","tag-lincoln","tag-lincolns-assassination","tag-newspaper-archives","tag-newspapers","tag-newspapers-for-genealogy","tag-obituaries","tag-obituary-archives","tag-perry-green-brock","tag-president-lincoln","tag-richard-r-davis","tag-samuel-j-seymour","tag-seymour"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70463,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6232\/revisions\/70463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}