Last photo of Lincoln before his death?

Lincoln seems to be in the news a lot this week. Today CNN is reporting that a new photograph of Lincoln has emerged that is believed to be the last taken before his assassination in 1865. It was discovered in a photo album belonging to General Ulysses S. Grant’s great-great grandson, Ulysses S. Grant VI.

Last Photo of Lincoln?

Here is a portion of the article:

NEW YORK (CNN) — An expert on Lincoln photography thinks a photograph found in Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s family-owned album showing President Abraham Lincoln in front of the White House could be one of the last photos taken of the 16th president before he was assassinated in 1865.

A photo found in Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s family album is verified to contain an image of Abraham Lincoln.

Grant’s great-great grandson Ulysses S. Grant VI had seen the previously unpublished image in the general’s personal photo album, but didn’t think much of it until he scrutinized it earlier this year.

“I started to think that it might be the White House,” said Grant, a construction business owner from Springfield, Missouri. “Then I started to look at the height difference between the people in the photo.”

Thinking that the towering individual commanding the attention of the other people in the image could be Lincoln — who stood 6-foot-4 and is the nation’s tallest president — Grant called Keya Morgan, a renowned collector and scholar of Lincoln and Gen. Grant photographs, to see whether his suspicions could be verified.

Morgan, who owns the world’s largest collection of Lincoln artifacts and original photographs, persuaded Grant to take the small photo out of the album to see whether any clues could be found on the back — particularly the name of the photographer.

“If you don’t know who the photographer is, it’s like not knowing who your father and mother are,” Morgan said.

Sure enough, the seal of photographer Henry F. Warren appeared on the back, along with an inscription: “Lincoln in front of the White House,” dated 1865. Grant recognized the handwriting as that of his great-grandfather and Gen. Grant’s youngest son, Jesse Grant. Those indicators, along with a revenue stamp used from 1864-66 to raise money during the Civil War, helped convince Morgan that the photograph could be the well-documented missing photo from Lincoln’s last “sitting.”

You can read the here.

Message found hidden in Lincoln's pocketwatch

Message in Lincoln's Pocketwatch

I found a really interesting news article on CNN about a message left to President Lincoln on the inside of his pocketwatch by a watchmaker who was repairing it at the time Fort Sumter was attacked. Here is the article:

A long-hidden message has been discovered inside Abraham Lincoln’s pocket watch, the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History announced Tuesday.
The message in the watch differs slightly from what the watchmaker later said he wrote.

The message in the watch differs slightly from what the watchmaker later said he wrote.

Watchmaker Jonathan Dillon was repairing Lincoln’s watch in April 1861 when he heard about the attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and wrote a short message on the metal inside the watch, the Smithsonian said.

There it remained, unseen for almost 150 years, it said.

In a 1906 interview with The New York Times, Dillon reported that as soon as he heard the news about the first shots of the Civil War, he unscrewed the dial of the watch and wrote on the metal, “The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try.”

The actual message that the museum found differs from the watchmaker’s recollection. It says, “Jonathan Dillon, April 13-1861, Fort Sumpter [sic] was attacked by the rebels on the above date J Dillon, April 13-1861, Washington, thank God we have a government, Jonth Dillon.”

According to the Smithsonian, it was not unusual for professional watchmakers to record their work inside a watch.

“Lincoln never knew of the message he carried in his pocket,” said Brent D. Glass, director of the National Museum of American History.

The museum decided to open the watch after being contacted by the watchmaker’s great-great-grandson, Doug Stiles, who had heard about the message Dillon said he had inscribed and wanted to see if it was really there.

Original Shakespeare Theater Found

Shakespeare in 1610

I just got through reading an interesting article from the BBC about archaeologists having found and partially excavated the foundation of the original theater Shakespeare would have used. It is believed that the premier of plays such as Romeo and Juliet and an older version of Hamlet were performed at this theater with Shakespeare himself possibly acting.

The article also talks about a newly discovered portrait of Shakespeare, believed to have been painted in 1610. As mentioned in the clip below, it is ” thought to be the only surviving image of him made during his lifetime.” It is pictured above.

Archaeologists believe they have unearthed the remains of Shakespeare’s first theatre, the BBC has learned.

A team from the Museum of London found the remains of the theatre in Shoreditch last summer.

Built in 1576, it is thought the Bard acted there and that it also hosted the premiere of Romeo and Juliet.

Meanwhile, a portrait of Shakespeare, thought to be the only surviving image of him made during his lifetime, has been unveiled in London.

Taryn Nixon, from the Museum of London, said her team had found part of the original curved wall of the playhouse, which was believed to be polygonal in shape.

A metre and a half below street level, it has also uncovered the gravel surface, gently sloping down towards the stage, where the bulk of the audience would have stood.
But the archaeologists fear the stage itself may be buried underneath a housing development.

Mark Twain and 19th Century American History

As a student of history, I unfortunately do not have a lot of time to devote to reading fiction books of my choice. If I am reading generally it is either a specifically assigned book or text for a class or a book pertaining to something relavent to my studies (such as Der Dienst by Reinhard Gehlen which pertains to my most recent research project). Occasionally however, I am able to get a little bit of fictional reading in now and then and when I do, my favorite author is Mark Twain.

The reasons behind this are simple: not only is the man a great humorist, but most of his books takes place in my favorite time period, the 19th century. To me, Twain provides a fascinating view on 19th century culture and life that standard textbooks or academic journals cannot even touch because he was actually there, writing stories about everyday life with the careless ease of someone who does not have to critically examine details because he has experienced the times his whole life. I think that says something that modern scholars can’t even come close to because they weren’t there.

Twain covers several different countries during the 19th century including the American western frontier in Roughing It, Germany, Switzerland and Italy in A Tramp Abroad and Spain, the Christian holy land and northern Africa in The Innocents Abroad. He also gives us his usually witty and smart-aleck interpretation of what’s going on and of the different areas. Of course, the reader does have to take into consideration that quite a bit of each story is in fact fiction; however, the fiction was made up within the confines of Twain’s 19th century mind and travels.

For those of you who are interested in reading some of Mark Twain’s collection, I recommend the following two books:

Roughing It by Mark Twain

A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

They are by far my favorite as they deal with my two favorite parts of the world: the American western frontier and German-speaking Europe. They also, needless to say, take place in the mid-19th century.

For more books I recommend from Mark Twain, visit the fiction section of the History Rhymes store.

Research Proposal Completed

I’ve finally finished my research paper proposal for one of my history classes. The research paper is going to be about Reinhard Gehlen, but I have discussed that in a previous post. I feel a lot better about the paper now though because I now have a clear direction in which I want to head with the paper. I now know exactly what I am going to argue and how I’m going to go about doing it with the sources I’ve found.

There are a couple of books that I would really like to use, however, one of them is currently checked out and isn’t due back until May and the other book isn’t available at the library at my university. I put in a request to get it from Colorado State University’s library through our Interlibrary Loan Service, but who knows how long that will take. I probably won’t get it until the end of this month or even later. Unfortunately it’s a primary source, which is important. The book is the memoirs of James Critchfield who worked with Reinhard Gehlen directly. Critchfield worked on the CIA side of things, so it would be interesting to get that perspective. As of now, I just have Gehlen’s perspective which, without the other perspective, is quite biased. Hopefully I will get it soon enough to be able to use it as a resource for my paper.

1885 Photographs of the Campbell House in St. Louis

I have to admit that I have an unhealthy obsession with 19th century architecture and houses in general which means that whenever I come across photos taken in the 19th century of a house from that period, I get quite excited. I’m not entirely sure how I managed to stumble upon this website, but I ended up on the website for the Campbell House in St. Louis, Missouri.

I’ve posted 4 of the photographs taken in 1885 from the website here. You can find the rest of the collection of 60 photographs on the Campbell House website.

The front of the Campbell House

The parlor in the Campbell House

The Summer Bedroom in the Campbell House

James Campbell's Sitting Room

Gehlen Research: Primary Documents Jackpot

Reinhard Gehlen

As I have discussed before, I am doing a research project on the former German spymaster Reinhard Gehlen and the organization that he established after the second World War which eventually became the West German (and now just German) Bundesnachrichtendienst, or Federal Intelligence Service. The relationship between Gehlen and his spy ring had with the United States, in particularly the CIA, was extremely controversial as the American public would have been horrified to know that their government had employed former Nazis in their attempt to gather intelligence on the Soviets.

Because of the controversy of their relationship many officials in the CIA, the American military and the American government did not trust Gehlen or the intelligence gathered by his organization during the Cold War. This is going to be the focus of my research project. From a post-Soviet era, 21st century vantage point, I want to know if the intelligence gathered by Gehlen’s spy ring was — as many Americans claim — actually inaccurate and deceiving or if that was simply something that the Americans unjustly accused the Gehlen Organization of. I watched a History Channel special about Reinhard Gehlen which presented Gehlen in a very negative light, claiming that his intelligence was falsified and incorrect. I guess we will see though.

Today I spent most of the morning and early afternoon researching at the university library. I have already spent quite a bit of time there this week, but this time I spent it looking for primary documents related to Gehlen and his organization. It turns out that the CIA declassified a huge number of documents in the late 90’s and in 2004. That’s lucky, but unfortunately it would require a trip to the National Archives in Washington DC, which I am unwilling to spend the money and time to do for a short undergraduate research paper. I was quite discouraged by this, but after a bit more looking around on the internet, I came across a site from The George Washington University which has all of the released documents in handy PDF files I can download for free. Needless to say, that pretty much made my day. I am now in over my head with primary documents on the organization and can’t wait to start sifting through them.

LibraryThing

So I broke down and decided to catalog my ever-growing personal library. I chose to use an online tool called LibraryThing because it seemed like a good way of keeping track of everything. There are other tools out there that I considered, many of which are offline, however most of the cost money and I didn’t want to spend money on something when I can get it for free. LibraryThing seems like a good tool. I haven’t cataloged my entire library yet, only what I happen to have on hand with me at the moment. All 38 books. I have a much larger collection of books that I still need to move to my apartment at some point.

If you are interested, you can view my library here. I will also be putting a link to my library catalog as a button on the right side of the blog so readers can view it at anytime.

If you have any books that you think I should add to my library or any comments, feel free to leave me a comment on this post or any other post.

Here is a widget with some of my books:

Oldest English Words

The BBC is running an interesting article about the oldest words in the English language. Researchers are currently saying that they believe the oldest words still in use in modern English are “I”, “we”, “two” and “three” which date back tens of thousands of years. They also cite words such as “squeeze”, “guts”, “stick” and “bad” as words that will go extinct. Here is a portion of the article:

Some of the oldest words in English have been identified, scientists say.

Reading University researchers claim “I”, “we”, “two” and “three” are among the most ancient, dating back tens of thousands of years.

Their computer model analyses the rate of change of words in English and the languages that share a common heritage.

The team says it can predict which words are likely to become extinct – citing “squeeze”, “guts”, “stick” and “bad” as probable first casualties.

“We use a computer to fit a range of models that tell us how rapidly these words evolve,” said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading.

“We fit a wide range, so there’s a lot of computation involved; and that range then brackets what the true answer is and we can estimate the rates at which these things are replaced through time.”

David Irving's Translation of Der Dienst: Erinnerungen 1942-1971

For anyone who is going to be working with the memoirs of Reinhard Gehlen, do not use David Irving’s translation of it, entitled: The Service: The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen. For a project I am working on, I have been dealing with both Irving’s translation as well as the original book in German written by Gehlen himself (Der Dienst: Erinnerungen 1942-1971). I read the German version cover to cover for this project and have been attempting to use Irving’s translation as a quick reference to check for facts, however, as I have been using the translation, not only is information missing from the original in his translation (I’ve had to check the original multiple times to verify it was actually there), but there are actually pages and pages of accounts and “memories” that don’t exist anywhere in the original!

The accounts may be true for all I know, but they are presented as though Gehlen told them (though he did not in his memoirs) and there are no references cited. It has been most frustrating and I do intend to report this inaccuracy to the university. Perhaps they will dispose of the book as anyone who is unable to read the German version would have no idea otherwise, possibly leading to inaccuracy.