Rare tickets to Ford’s Theatre for the night Lincoln was assassinated sold for $262K
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Ford’s Theatre tickets from the night President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated sold for $262,500 on Saturday.
A Boston auction house sold the pair of tickets that were stamped with the date of April 14, 1865, with seat numbers 41 and 42 in section D written out in pencil, according to The Associated Press.
Auction officials reportedly said that “the handwritten seating assignments and the circular April 14th-dated stamp match those found on other known authentic tickets, including a used ticket stub in the collection of Harvard University’s Houghton Library.”
That Harvard ticket stub is the only other known remaining ticket to still exist.
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The history behind the tickets
Actor John Wilkes Booth reportedly learned the morning of April 14, 1865, that Lincoln was planning on attending the performance of a comedy called “Our American Cousin.”
Around 10:15 that evening, as the play was winding into the final act, President and Mrs. Lincoln, along with their guests Maj. Henry Rathbone and his fiancée, Clara Harris, were watching the comedy while Booth was waiting just outside the door of the President’s Box, according to Ford’s Theatre’s detailed history of the tragic event on its website.
“Just as I had finished these lines and was standing towards the front of the President’s box, the fatal shot was fired. The report startled me somewhat, but, as the report was muffled, I thought it came from the property room of the theatre. I turned, looked up at the President’s box. I saw a man with a long dagger in the front of the box,” Harry Hawk, a Ford’s Theatre actor, said.
Lincoln was fatally shot in the back of the head and Booth ended up jumping from the box onto the stage and fled out a back door, according to The Associated Press.
Reports detailed that the president died early the next morning and Booth avoided being captured for 12 days until he was found and shot at a Virginia farm.
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What did the Ford Theatre ticket holders witness?
NPR reported that the seats the tickets describe wouldn’t have allowed those who owned the tickets to actually see Lincoln shot in the back of the head, but “they would have seen Booth leap from the box onto the stage as he fled.”
“These front-row seats to history allowed the original theatergoers to witness a tragic performance that changed the course of our nation. We’re honored to have played a part in preserving and sharing this remarkable piece of American history,” Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR Auction, said.
RR Auction reported that “this type of Ford’s Theatre ticket for April 14, 1865, is exceedingly rare — auction records reveal no other examples offered since their original sale as part of the Forbes Collection in 2002.”
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What other Lincoln items were sold at auction?
The New York Post reported that another item sold during the auction was a first edition of the Lincoln-Douglas debates signed by Lincoln himself that went for nearly $594,000.
Though the tickets and the first edition of the debates were the only Lincoln memorabilia to be sold at this particular auction, here are various items that have reportedly been sold at other auctions:
A copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Lincoln: $3.7 million.
Lincoln’s pocket watch: $3.4 million.
A copy of the Gettysburg Address handwritten by Lincoln : $52,000.
A second copy of the Gettysburg Address: $1.5 million.
Lincoln’s stovepipe hat: $6.5 million.
A complete set of transcripts of the Lincoln-Douglas debates: $350,000.
Lincoln’s inkwell: $78,000.
Lincoln’s deathbed: $6,000.
Lincoln family carriage: $300,000.
Lincoln’s White House china: $80,000.
Lincoln’s law partner’s desk: $52,500.
