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This evening the family and I were sitting in front of the TV watching a PBS special about the early days of American TV programs - games shows and the like - such as "What's My Line" and "I've Got a Secret". The host escorted an elderly gentleman onto the set. I immediately began thinking to myself that this was a Civil War veteran of some sort. He was none other than Samuel J. Seymour. Samuel James Seymour (c. 1860–April 14, 1956) was the last surviving person who had been present in Ford's Theatre the night of the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14,1865. He lived in Arlington, Virginia in his later years.
His story as he himself told it, was that he was a child when he attended the play at Ford's Theater. He distinctly remembers a man jumping off the balcony and injuring himslef, and that he had no concept of who the president was, but was concerned for the wellness of the man who fell and got hurt.
A search on the web provided this information: At age five, Seymour's godmother, Mrs. George S. Goldsborough, had taken him to see Our American Cousin. He claimed the two sat in the balcony on the side opposite Lincoln's box. Seymour reported that at the time of the assassination he at first thought that he himself had been shot. This was due to his nurse, while trying to fix a torn place in his blouse, having stuck him with a pin at the moment of the gun's discharge.[citation needed]
Two months before his death at age 96, he appeared on the CBS TV quiz show "I've Got a Secret" as a mystery subject. Coincidentally, Seymour died ninety-one years to the day of Lincoln's assassination.
It made me think about how close to those historic events we truely are. Here was a man who witnessed Lincoln's assassination, yet had his image recorded on an electronic TV device in the 1950s - at a time when my parents could have seen it live (I was born in 1963). All my wife and I could say was "wow" over and over again. Incredible.
- Jay Reid
Dreamer42
9th Texas/165th NY
His story as he himself told it, was that he was a child when he attended the play at Ford's Theater. He distinctly remembers a man jumping off the balcony and injuring himslef, and that he had no concept of who the president was, but was concerned for the wellness of the man who fell and got hurt.
A search on the web provided this information: At age five, Seymour's godmother, Mrs. George S. Goldsborough, had taken him to see Our American Cousin. He claimed the two sat in the balcony on the side opposite Lincoln's box. Seymour reported that at the time of the assassination he at first thought that he himself had been shot. This was due to his nurse, while trying to fix a torn place in his blouse, having stuck him with a pin at the moment of the gun's discharge.[citation needed]
Two months before his death at age 96, he appeared on the CBS TV quiz show "I've Got a Secret" as a mystery subject. Coincidentally, Seymour died ninety-one years to the day of Lincoln's assassination.
It made me think about how close to those historic events we truely are. Here was a man who witnessed Lincoln's assassination, yet had his image recorded on an electronic TV device in the 1950s - at a time when my parents could have seen it live (I was born in 1963). All my wife and I could say was "wow" over and over again. Incredible.
- Jay Reid
Dreamer42
9th Texas/165th NY
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