Son of ex-slave and Union soldier passes away (you read that right)

It's stuff like this that never ceases to fascinate me.  These things impress upon us that so much of our history... isn't that long ago after all.

Luke Martin, Jr. passed away a few days ago in Raleigh (that's the capital of North Carolina for those who might not know that).  Mr. Martin was 97.

He died 179 years after his father was born.  His father, by the way, was a former slave who escaped to freedom and then fought in the Civil War as a soldier in the Union army.

Fox News has more about the life of Luke Martin, Jr. and his father.

It wasn't all that uncommon for soldiers on both sides of the conflict to, long years later, marry much younger women.  A lot of it was because of the considerable pensions that soldiers received.  But the general consensus is that there was never a lack of true love in such relationships.  Many of which produced offspring such as Mr. Martin.

He died the other day and he was one generation removed from the greatest and most trying  war in American history.  A war that ended 150 years ago this year.

Think about that.

Historian though I be, it honestly astounds me that we could have that kind of connection to the past in our own day and age.

I'm reminded of something else in this kind of vein: Samuel Seymour, who at age 96 appeared on television (along such notables at the time as Lucille Ball) in 1956 to describe how he witnessed John Wilkes Booth assassinate Abraham Lincoln...



Gotta appreciate the pronounced presence of Winston cigarettes and the can of Prince Albert pipe tobacco in that segment, aye?  That's something nobody could get away with on television today.

It's been suggested that some people living today, perhaps even born in the 1960s, could live to ages approaching 200 years old. Can you imagine someone old enough (like myself) telling his great-great-great-great grandchildren about watching on television the destruction of the Challenger (which was 29 years ago yesterday)?

I suppose that anything is possible.

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1956 TV appearance by Samuel Seymour

Good friend "lowbridge" informed me about this a few years ago, so I've got to credit him with the find. It's a story that's gained renewed interest because of a certain upcoming movie.

So who was Samuel Seymour? He was the last surviving witness of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

And Mr. Seymour lived long enough to talk about it on national television (sharing a stage with Lucille Ball, among others).

From February 9 1956, here is Samuel Seymour's appearance on I've Got a Secret:

Pause for a moment, and consider: Samuel Seymour was five years old when he heard the gunshot in Ford's Theater and saw John Wilkes Booth jump down to the stage after shooting Lincoln in the back of the head. Seymour was 96 when he passed away two months after being on I've Got a Secret.

No doubt there are many still living today who watched Samuel Seymour tell his story on television.

A century and a half seems such a long time... until we consider how few lifetimes fit within it.

There are photographs existing today of veterans of the Revolutionary War, posing in their uniforms. Photography was invented in 1826: the same year that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams passed away. It was within the realm of possibility (though it never happened) that we could have had real pictures of either or both men before they died.

A relative of mine passed away ten years ago this month. He witnessed the Hindenburg explode. I got to hear him tell me about it from his own lips.

On the scale of history a hundred years is nothing. A thousand years is nothing. Between now and the time of Christ, there have been a mere twenty lifetimes.

Think about that. I certainly do.

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Trailer for ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER

You know him as Lincoln the Rail-Splitter, Lincoln the Lawyer, and Lincoln the President of the United States.

Now, bestselling historical author Seth Grahame-Smith has uncovered the true story of Lincoln... the Vampire Slayer.

Behold the trailer for the book!

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter should be in bookstores everywhere about now, and will almost certainly become required reading in history classrooms across the country.

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Bostic, North Carolina: Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln?

Found a curious item on the CharlotteObserver.com site about Bostic: a small town an hour's drive west of Charlotte here in North Carolina. Longstanding local folklore has it that Abraham Lincoln was born in a cabin atop what is now a tree-covered hill in this Rutherford County community, and not in Kentucky as the history books say. There is even the Bostic Lincoln Center: a small museum dedicated to the legend (which is not without its own supposed body of evidence). Either of the links will tell you more about the allegation, which is rife with all sorts of old-fashioned nineteenth-century ribaldry!

Hmmmm... fascinating, on numerous levels. I'm not saying that I do believe there's an iota of credence to the claim though (which Geoff Elliott of The Abraham Lincoln Blog describes as "bad history" and calls the Bostic Lincoln Center "one of the worst examples I've yet seen").

But I also know that history is never as clean and cut as the books make it out to be. Real life is a messier affair than most published chronicles. After all, we are talking about nothing more or less than people. So who knows?

Just gonna file this one away as a odd anecdote about the life of Lincoln, and pass this along for your perusal :-)

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The South will writhe again: Perversely funny FALLOUT 3

What I would give to have a brain gifted enough to handle stuff like math and software coding (and I've tried folks, believe you me). 'Cuz then I could maybe work for a company like Bethesda Game Studios, who not only are very talented at making video games like Fallout 3, but also have a twisted sense of humor.

So I've been working my Fallout 3 character through the Capital Wasteland, 200 years after the nuclear exchange between the United States and China. Just levellin' him up more or less. Well tonight I wound up in the ruins of Arlington National Cemetery...

Out of curiosity I went looking for Arlington House, which was the pre-Civil War home of Robert E. Lee and his family. It wasn't hard to spot and I gotta give serious props to the Bethesda staff for including such a nice historical location...

Guess what? You can go inside of Arlington House in Fallout 3! There's even a queen-sized bed (presumably in the Lees' private chambers) that you can sleep in and recover from in-game injuries.

But look at what's down in the BASEMENT...

A shrine to Abraham Lincoln?!? What the heck?!

Okay, that is so way wrong. But awfully hilarious just the same :-)

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Some very neat photos of American history

HBO's John Adams miniseries has left me still feeling both floored and haunted. If only everything else on television could be so powerful...

Ever since Sunday night when the finale ran, my interest in real American history (as opposed to the fake pageantry of, say, the current election cycle) has been stoked. Not that it ever went away or anything, but I guess that after becoming so cynical about what America is turning into, I felt a need to look back at what we used to be, and what we could still be again.

So one thing led to another and I found myself looking for the earliest photographs of Presidents that we know are in existence. I wasn't expecting to find any of John Adams (photography was invented the year he passed away and it would be some time before the process was perfected) but I did find this daguerreotype of his son John Quincy Adams: as the sixth President, he's the earliest for whom we have a photograph. This was taken in 1848, not long before he died while serving Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives.

As you study this picture, think about something: you're looking at a photo of a man who was not only the son of John Adams, but who also knew George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and most of the other Founding Fathers. Look into his eyes and realize that he looked into their eyes. This isn't some artist's fanciful rendition, but the actual image of a real person who was very familiar with those great statesmen.

Suddenly, 1776 doesn't seem that long ago after all.

Thomas Lincoln was born the year before in 1775. A photo exists of him also. So far as I've been able to find, this is the only one of Thomas Lincoln. But his son Abraham ranks as the most photographed man in the world up to the time of his death.

Speaking of Abraham Lincoln, here's the photo of him delivering his second inaugural address in 1865 on the steps of the Capitol. It might take you awhile to find him ('cuz it did me too) but if you look very carefully, you can make out one other very well-known visage of the time: that of the famous actor John Wilkes Booth.

Which brings me to the real inspiration for this post. That I wanted to share one of my all-time favorite "interesting" photos from history. Ever since I first saw this as a high school student, something about this one has greatly captivated me. After Lincoln was assassinated by Booth, his body was embalmed and put on a black funeral train that would make a 1,700-mile long winding route back to Illinois for burial. At various stops during the trip, his casket was taken from the train and then carried in a procession to some location where he would lay in state so that mourners could file past and pay their respects.

On April 25th, 1865, Abraham Lincoln's casket was solemnly carried through the streets of New York City...

There was such a demand to watch the procession, that the owners of many houses along the route charged $100 for people to come into their homes and watch from the windows.

So, you see that house on the left-hand side of the street in the above photo? On the side of the house immediately facing the camera, in the second story window, you can see two small figures watching as President Lincoln's casket goes by.

Those are two little boys peering out of that window of their grandfather's house. One of them - presumably the taller - is six-and-a-half year old Theodore Roosevelt, with his younger brother Elliot.

35 years and another assassination later, "Teddy" would be sworn in as the twenty-sixth President of the United States. When he took the oath of office after his own election in 1905, Teddy Roosevelt wore a ring embedded with a lock of hair that had been posthumously taken from Abraham Lincoln as he lay on his deathbed across the street from Ford's Theatre.

For many years I've heard that there might also exist a photograph of John Wilkes Booth, dressed in uniform, at the hanging of radical abolitionist John Brown. If anybody knows if that's true and where it could be found, I'd sure appreciate having you drop me a line about it :-)

So many other photos that I could talk about here. I need to wrap this up 'cuz I've plenty of stuff on my plate today. But before I do, there's one other photo that I'll share with y'all. This one isn't necessarily a "famous" pic but the person it depicts is certainly... interesting.

Boston Corbett, born in 1832 in England and then his family moved to the United States. Died... well, no one knows. In 1858, in order to avoid "sinning", Boston Corbett castrated himself with a pair of scissors! He then went straight to a prayer meeting, which he soon had to leave in order to go see a doctor because he was feeling faint from loss of blood (Gee ya think?!?).

A few years later, as a sergeant in the Union Army, Boston Corbett defied orders and fatally shot John Wilkes Booth. When interrogated by his superior officers (who had been trying to take Booth alive), Corbett explained that "God Almighty directed me" to open fire.

Ya see, if they'd just let us teach this kind of history in the schools, we'd have no problem getting the kids interested in their education :-)

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