Mary Lincoln, always fretting about money, tried to sell her old clothes through a New York City broker in 1867. She used an assumed name, but the wily broker discovered her identity and word leaked out.

She asked high prices for the elaborate pieces — $75 for a black silk borcade shirt, $40 for a purple foulard, $30 for a purple opera cloak, $1500 for a long camel-hair shawl.

Most pieces sold for meager prices to second-hand dress dealers, though. The money Mrs. Lincoln made didn’t even cover the commission she owed the broker.

Two illustrations were valuable guides for the restoration of Petersen House, the house where Lincoln died.

Albert Berghaus made a woodcut that shows many details of the president’s death room. The walls are covered with striped paper and there’s a narrow border at the top. The pictures on the walls are shown in detail. Clothing is hanging from hooks on the west wall — a vest, a cloak, an overcoat and maybe another coat or a pair of trousers.

A candlestick is obvious on the floor by the bed. A stove pipe end sticks out of one wall. A cap hangs over the back door.

William Petersen’s boarders signed statement attesting to the accuracy of his sketches for Leslies’ Illustrated Newspaper.

Artist Albert Waud sketched the room as it appeared that weekend, with many of the same details.

Source: National Park Service

Mary Lincoln, always fretting about money, tried to sell her old clothes through a New York City broker in 1867. She used an assumed name, but the wily broker discovered her identity and word leaked out.

She asked high prices for the elaborate pieces — $75 for a black silk brocade shirt, $40 for a purple foulard, $30 for a purple opera cloak, $1500 for a long camel-hair shawl.

Newspapers mocked her “old clothes sale.”

Most pieces sold for meager prices to second-hand dress dealers, though. The money Mrs. Lincoln made didn’t even cover the commission she owed the broker.

Miss Julia Adelaide Shepard wrote her father about the events at Ford’s Theatre on April 14.

On April 16, she wrote that the assassin escaped through a back alley on a swift horse before the cavalrymen came dashing up Tenth Street and stood with their swords drawn in front of the theater.

“Too late! Too late! What mockery armed men are now,” Miss Shepard wrote.

Mary Lincoln visited Queen Victoria at the monarch’s rural residence Balmoral in 1869.

Both women were depressed over the deaths of their husbands, and neither would ever remarry, although Mary Lincoln lived until 1882 and the queen lived until 1901.

President Lincoln’s secretary John G. Nicolay said no facial muscles showed more mobility than Mr. Lincoln’s

“His face is an ever-varying mirror in which various expressions are continually flashing,” Nicolay wrote in the popular The Century Magazine in 1891.

He added that, unlike most very tall men, Lincoln was lithe and agile and quick in his movements.

In the 1840s, 400,000 Germans emigrated to the U.S. Among them were Anna and William Petersen, who owned the Tenth Street home where President Lincoln died.

The Petersen had been in the country 24 years by the time of the assassination. They arrived on June 23, 1841 aboard the steamship Europa, which docked in Baltimore. William Petersen applied for citizenship in 1844. At that time, a wife’s citizenship was derived from her husbands.

Dr. Samuel Mudd, convicted as a co-conspirator in the assassination, is buried in the small graveyard at rural St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Bryantown, Md., less than three miles from his farm.

Dr. Mudd and his wife were married at St. Peter’s, and all nine of their children were baptized there.

Washington’s public buildings were often converted into makeshift hospitals during the war.

Church pews became hospital beds. Fraternal lodges, private homes, hotels, schools and warehouses were turned over to medical men and their patients.

Carpenters covered church pews with scantling so floors could be laid on them and pulpits and other furnishings could be stored underneath. Hymnbooks were packed away, and kitchens were established in church basements.

Georgetown College housed patients. Even the second floor of the Patent Office became a hospital.

Source: Reveille in Washington by Margaret Leech

Michael O’Laughlen grew up across the street from John Wilkes Booth.

O’Laughlen was sentenced to prison at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas for his part in his childhood chum’s plot against President Lincoln. He contracted yellow fever at the fort on August 19, 1867. Despite co-conspirator Dr. Samuel Mudd’s best efforts to save his life, O’Laughlen died on this day in 1867.

He was buried in the low-lying land surrounding Fort Jefferson, but his body was eventually turned over to his mother, who had it transported to bucolic Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, Md.

Booth, his old neighbor, was buried in the same cemetery after the government released his body to his mother.