Was Laura Keene in President Lincoln's State Box?

Laura Keene in a photograph by Charles DeForest Fredricks, ca. 1863. [National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution]

While many of the details of the Lincoln assassination are considered facts, others are still debated to this day. One reason is the varying testimonies collected after the assassination, some of which were not recorded until years, even decades, afterwards. Why some people remembered certain details that others remembered completely differently is a human phenomenon that historians must consider when drawing their own conclusions. One of these details that scholars still debate is whether Laura Keene actually made her way into the president’s state box that tragic night. Explore the evidence below and draw your own historical conclusion.

For more on Laura Keene and the trailblazing, exciting, and fulfilling life she led as an actress, theatre manager, mother, and entrepreneurial woman, check out this biographical article.

YES – According to Dr. Charles Leale, the first doctor to reach Lincoln and attend to his wound, Laura did ask him if she could hold the president and he gave her permission to do so.

YES – William J. Ferguson, callboy and later actor, claimed he assisted Laura to and inside the president’s box, but that she did not hold Lincoln.

YES – Actress Jeannie Gourlay (playing Mary Trenchard) claimed Laura was in the box and had been escorted there by Jeannie's father, T. C. Gourlay, “by way of a passage ‘known to the regular company.’” Apparently, this was possible: “one could exit through a backstage door (stage left), from there enter the building adjoining the theatre on the south, climb the stairs to the ‘lounging room’ on the second floor, and enter from there directly back into the theatre. This would put one in the south end of the dress circle. James and Harry Ford had rooms on the third floor of the adjoining building and must have frequently entered the theatre in this manner.” Jeannie also wrote that Laura held the president’s head “‘in her arms and found blood trickling down her dress.’”

YES – Actors Helen Truman and E. A. Emerson claimed they saw Laura in the box that night.

YES – According to Laura’s daughter Emma, who wrote down her recollections after visiting with her mother the day after the assassination, she had a conversation with a servant at a friend’s house who told her that she had been at the theatre “and most distinctly spoke of seeing Miss Keene in the box after the firing.” Emma also wrote the following based on her mother’s account: “She told me that on hearing a voice from the box saying, ‘For God’s sake, Miss Keene, get some water,’ she procured some and made her way with difficulty to the box. As she entered and saw the president wounded, the thought passed through her mind how much he resembled a picture of ‘The Dead Christ.’ She also showed me the stage clothes she had worn; not only her dress, but even her underskirts were bespattered with blood...I took her in my arms to embrace her, she shook all over like a leaf.”

YES – Mrs. Eldridge, a member of Wood’s Theatre stock company in Cincinnati, said that Laura recounted a similar story shortly after the “‘sad event.’” Laura also gave her a piece of the blood-stained dress.

NO – Thomas H. Sherman (former secretary to James G. Blaine) claimed that he saw Laura help “‘a man up over the side of the box and sent for a pitcher of water,’” but he does not say he saw her in the box.

NO – The wife of J. B. Wright, Ford’s stage manager, claimed Laura was never in the box.

NO (or at least suggestive of a No) – No one who testified in the trials following the assassination mentioned anything regarding Laura being in the box that night. Many find it peculiar that there would be no mention of such a prominent person in the box, especially given that she would have been quite noticeable in her voluminous dress.

 

Laura Keene’s bloodstained cuff from April 14, 1865. She gave the cuff to her nephew M.J.Adler, who preserved it throughout his life. [National Museum of American History/Bequest of Virginia Adler Thompson, 1962]