Tuesday, August 09, 2011

The last surviving witness of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln



Thanks to Open Culture for alerting me to this extraordinary video. In 1865 the five-year-old Samuel James Seymour was present at Ford's Theater when John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln. And here he is talking about it on a television panel game in 1956.

Seymour lived only a couple more months after making this programme; the sad thing is that the fall he had beforehand at the hotel may have hastened his end. He died on 14 April 1956 - 91 years to the day after Lincoln.

1 comment:

Simon Titley said...

Yes, but what did Mr Seymour think of the play?