Abraham Lincoln death relic – a snippet of wallpaper and a copy of a 1980 letter from the US Department of the Interior written by Gay A. Thompson, an Architectural Technician of the National Park Service attesting to its being a legitimate fragment of the wallpaper in the “Lincoln death bedroom” at the Peterson House located across the street from Ford’s Theater. To quote Thompson, “Our findings show that your wallpaper sample is authentic and is from the room where Lincoln died.” The letter also reveals this conclusion could only be reached by soaking a sample in water for seven hours, thereby delaminating and removing the top layers of wallpaper that had been added after Lincoln’s death. The remaining wallpaper was then compared to a sample that had been collected in 1978 by the Park Service and was found to be consistent with the sample offered for analysis. Thompson surmised that the wallpaper was probably taken as an unauthorized souvenir between 1900 and 1932 when the house was a privately operated museum, before the Park Service gained control and restored it.

[Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Union, Confederate, Emancipation, 13th Amendment, Slave, Slavery, African-American, Black History, Presidential Collectibles, Political Collectibles] [John Wilkes Booth]