HOMETOWN HISTORY TOURS

144 years ago today President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth while watching the play, Our American Cousin, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. 

Lincoln’s blood and brain matter on part of a pillowcase on display at Philadelphia’s Grand Army  of the Republic Museum and Library is being sought for DNA testing.

Dr. John Sotos, a cardiologist, wants to test the pillowcase to confirm whether Lincoln had a rare genetic cancer syndrome called multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B

Museum board members call this artifact the “Shroud of Turin of Civil War history.” The board may determine whether to submit this historical evidence for DNA testing at their May 5th meeting. 

Was the president dying of brain cancer at the time of his death? Testing the material could help solve this medical mystery. 

While the bloodstained pillowcase belongs to the Grand Army of the Republic Museum and Library, the chair Lincoln was seated in when shot is on display locally at The Henry Ford in Dearborn. The Lincoln chair is part of  the permanent exhibit inside the museum “With Liberty and Justice for All.”

The  carte-de-visite (CDV), a small photograph used during the Civil War era as a type of calling card belonging to Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth is on display at the Plymouth Historical Museum. 

The CDV is part of the museum’s Weldon Petz Abraham Lincoln Exhibit.  The Weldon Petz collection includes: artifacts from Lincoln’s youth, a rare book belonging to Lincoln as a boy, rare family genealogy and photographs, handwritten legal documents and law books, a life mask of Lincoln made in 1860, Civil War art, a lock of Lincoln’s hair, and artifacts from the Lincoln assassination.

The Lincoln Archives, collected over a period of 70 years by Dr. Weldon Petz, comprise more than 12,000Lincoln artifacts, research papers, and other resource materials. This is the largest such collection in Michigan, second largest in the Midwest, and one of the largest and finest private collections of Lincolniana in the country.

Any other local Lincoln exhibits? Please let me know so I can add them to this post. Or , submit the information in the comment section. Thanks!