Henry Ulke, a popular portrait painter in Washington, D.C. in 1865 and one whose work still hangs in the White House and the National Portrait Gallery, spent the evening of April 14 running up and down the curving steps that separated the Lincoln death room from the kitchen of Petersen’s Boarding House.

Ulke and his brother Julius joined other Petersen boarders in fetching hot water bottles so doctors could place them around President Lincoln’s limbs to keep the blood flowing.

Source: Washington Post, Jan. 24, 1909