Posted on 04/14/2025 12:13:16 PM PDT by mairdie
While making the closing argument in this [Camp Douglas] case, on the 17th of April, 1865, I received a dispatch from the Secretary of War, directing me to report in person immediately to the War Department to aid in the examinations respecting the murder of the President. I started for Washington the same evening, reached there on the morning of the 19th, and was "specially assigned by the Secretary of War for duty on the investigation of the murder of President Lincoln and the attempted assassination of Mr. Seward", and a room was assigned to me in the War Department.
The gloom of that journey to Washington and the feeling of vague terror and sorrow with which I traversed its streets, I cannot adequately describe, and shall never forget. To this day, I never visit that City without some shadow of that dark time settling over my spirit. All the public buildings and a large portion of the private houses were heavily draped in black. The people moved about the streets with bowed heads and sorrow-stricken faces, as though some Herod had robbed each home of its first born.
When men spoke to each other in the streets, there were tremulous tones in their voices, and a quivering of the lips, as though tears and violent expression of grief were held back only by great effort. In the faces of those in authority -- Cabinet ministers, officers of the army, -- there was an anxious expression of the eye as though a dagger's gleam in a strange hand was to be expected; and a pale determined expression, a set of the jaw that said: "The truth about this conspiracy shall be made clear and the assassins found and punished: we will stand guard and the Government shall not die."
That is so neat! You must have heard stories if not from her, then from her children. I’m fascinated by the lives these people lived whose blood we carry. That’s a memory to cherish and to tell your kids about.
My only memory of a great grandparent was of being in a crib in a hallway in Texas and someone who kept putting back the doll I kept throwing out. But nothing about the person returning the doll.
I’d been cleaning great grandfather’s grave high on a hill overlooking his horse farm. After putting up this story, I was contacted by Civil War reenactors who wanted to take over the grave and they put up an historical plaque. I got invited to give a talk at the dedication. Wonderful people.
https://iment.com/maida/familytree/burnett/historicalmarker.htm
Their actions led to the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. Johnson wanted to fire Sec. of War Stanton. To impede Johnson's attempts, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in 1867 that limited the powers of the President to remove any Cabinet member without permission of the Senate. Johnson had vetoed the Bill, but Congress passed it over his veto on March 2, 1867. On August 12, 1867, Johnson suspended Stanton from his office, placing U.S. Grant as Secretary of War Ad Interim. On February 21, 1868, Johnson fired Stanton, which led to his impeachment.
In 1926, a similar law dealing with the President's ability to remove non-Cabinet appointees such as Postmaster was found to be unconstitutional, and found at the same time that the Tenure of Office Act was invalid.
My family seems to have been dedicated writers all the way back.
Capt Martin Cregier’s Journal of the Esopus Wars - 1663
https://encyclopedia.nahc-mapping.org/document/journal-esopus-war-captain-martin-cregier
Rev John Livingstone - 1666
https://www.henrylivingston.com/bios/jl/jl-lifeofjohnlivingstone-p127-129.htm
Major Henry Livingston Jr’s War Journal - 1775
https://www.henrylivingston.com/writing/prose/revdiary.htm
Colonel Henry Bicker’s Valley Forge Order Book - 1778
https://iment.com/maida/familytree/gibson/orderbook2ndpa-1.htm
Even the book of my father’s poetry that I got into genealogy to find turned out to be in the Harvard special collection. His mother’s book was in the Brown University special collection. His father’s writing is scattered everywhere but I’ve been collecting it to eventually put out together.
Thanks for the links. I’ll be checking them out. My 9th Great-Grandfather came over as an indentured servant on the Mayflower. He was a tutor to Edward Winslow’s children. He signed the Mayflower Compact. As far as I know, he left no documents or manuscripts.
No question
On my mother’s side, I had two ancestors who chose the New World over a Scottish prison in the 1600s. No idea if they could even read, much less write.
Mayflower ancestors are a big deal, whether or not they left documents. To pay for a tutor to travel to America, he had to have been close to the family, as well as well educated. If he was well educated, the probability is that his family had some education. How has tracing him back gone? I’d wonder if he had some religious background since a lot of education seemed to have come through that.
Have you done a lot of reading on life on the Mayflower and after it landed? I presume he married after reaching this country. GIVE! What did you learn about him???? Exciting. Never studied that period but it sounds fascinating.
Thanks. I have biographical material on the man. He apparently didn’t leave any personal documents. His house has been reconstructed at Plimoth Plantation. I’ve been to Plymouth, England and visited the harbor where the Mayflower sailed from, and been to Plymouth, Massachusetts, but those were long before I even knew of him being my 9th great-grandfather. I’ve wanted to get to the museum where his rebuilt house is, but walking around the whole place would be difficult for me these days.
I find it fascinating that we go to visit places that turn out to be part of our family history. I had no idea my ancestors came from MA and ended up writing a book on a stool in a donut shop that if I turned around I was facing my ancestral cemetery and the home of my ancestor, John Woodcock. Just bizarre.
Know what you mean about walking. I gave up walking far a long time ago. I travel from bench to bench, like mother did. Only I don’t carry a statistics book with me to read on the bench like she did. She was working on her master’s degree when she died.
I’ve been to Plymouth but can’t remember if I’ve been to Plymouth Plantation. Mostly I remember touring Sturbridge in MA and Williamsburg down south. Also been to a lot of upper NY forts.
By the way, MA is so great for original documents. I’ve gone into city halls and actually seen original 16th century documents there.
17th century. sigh. sorry.
Thanks for the info. Wish I was 30 years younger. I live in New York State, and over 20 years ago, I spent many days in Boston doing research on the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments at the Boston State Archives and the State House archives, the Boston Athenaeum, the Mass. Historical Society, Harvard's Houghton Library, and elsewhere in the State, ie., Massachusetts National Guard Museum & Archives in Concord, as well as the National Archives in D.C.
I took a bus tour of the British Isles back in 2006, and I wish I knew then what I know now about my family history, because we visited a lot of the places connected to my mother's side of the family. I never knew any of my grandparents, and my mother knew little herself, having come to the U.S. as a little girl from Canada with her older brother and their mother who was divorced. Everything I've learned has been through my family tree research.
It wasn't until my mother died in 1990 that I went to Canada to do some family research, and found out more about that side of the family than I ever expected. At one of the archives I visited, I found a family tree on the Way family, which is the line my mother was descended from. From that I learned that my 5th Great-Grandfather led a NY county militia (Dutchess) during the Revolutionary War. He's listed in the DAR Patriot Index. I had ancestors who were both Patriots and Loyalists on her side.
I too visited Sturbridge several times in my younger days. I usually stopped there and ate at the Publick House Inn there, either on my way to Boston to do research or on my way back. I always stopped at their bake shop on the way home to get one of their apple pies, which were to die for.
Wikipedia claims: "DNA study pointed to Soule's parents as Jan Sol and his wife Mayken Labis, who are identified by their marriage as Protestant refugees in London, England, in 1586 and by the baptisms of their children before 1600 in Haarlem, Holland."
I found the DNA connection interesting since my father was born in Holland in 1904. And according to the alleged connections on Ancestry.com, some of my mother's ancestors came from Holland and settled in New Amsterdam. I'll never know the truth of any of these connections, so I'll take them with a grain of salt. I am connected to George Soule via confirmed DNA through his children.
I have some books on the Mayflower on my bookshelf but haven't gotten to them yet, so know very little on the subject, or the people who came over.
George married Mary Buckett or Becket sometime in Duxbury, Mass. His date of death is given as January 22, 1679 in Duxbury.
My mother was born in 1923. She had a great uncle, Robert, who was born in Buffalo NY around 1854-55.
She remembers Uncle Robert telling a tale of when Lincoln’s funeral cortage passed through Buffalo, and his coffin was taken into city hall. Uncle Robert, being a boy, climbed a telegraph pole to watch the proceedings from across the street. Mom always though it a fanciful story, the kind that old relatives keep repeating....
Many years later (probably in the 1980s) Mom and I visited the Buffalo History Museum, and at the time, it had a large exhibit on Lincoln, part of which was photographs of the funeral cortage as it arrived in Buffalo
And in one photo, it could be clearly seen that on a telegraph pole across from city hall, was the figure of a boy, about 10 years old....
Here’s examples of the sorts of information MA will give you. And it’s organized beautifully. There are all town books in all libraries that copy out the information from the original town books.
https://www.iment.com/maida/familytree/richmond-capt-edward-1632-1696/index.htm
https://www.iment.com/maida/familytree/remington-lt-john-1602-1657/index.htm
https://iment.com/maida/familytree/wilmarth-ensign-thomas-mary-robinson-1648-1694/index.htm
***********
Rhode Island isn’t as good, but still not bad. They scooped up all the data at one time, then later they scooped up what they hadn’t gotten earlier and published that next; then again, then again. So you have to go to multiple books for particular information.
New York is just genealogical disaster on the hoof. If you go into the town halls, you can see stuff but that’s a lot of traveling. It felt like I lived in the trailer at the Albany library for a while, it seemed trying to copy out Dutch info. Eyes crossed. And spent a lot of time in research institutions all across NY.
Jumping up and down! MARVELOUS STORY!!!!
BRILLIANT!!!!
I’ve been in that museum. They have photos of my 3rd great grandfather’s house and garden, as well as gardener. My 2nd great grandfather’s house wasn’t far from there but is now gone.
We only had one family story that came down. Mother corresponded with father’s mother before they married and heard them from her. One was that the family had entertained Lafayette and they still had the wine glasses unwashed, though no one knew anymore which one he’d drunk from. Later research showed the story was true. Two different direct ancestors and one uncle had ALL separately entertained Lafayette, so have no idea which entertainment generated the family story goblets. Nor where they ended up.
That’s wild. It makes total sense that the DNA trees and the internet linkage is expanding the voluminous information we got from the genealogists who practically lived in research institutions to gather the original information together. But hearing your story makes it so real. Marvelous to hear about Jan Sol.
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