Lincoln's Hair Lock With Bloody Telegram Up For Auction

ACROSS ILLINOIS — A lock of slain U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s hair removed during a postmortem examination will be auctioned off Sept. 12. Paired with a blood-stained historic telegram received moments after the president’s assassination, both items are expected to fetch $75,000

The lock measures 2-inches long and was clipped from the Lincoln’s left temple the morning of his death. It was presented to Dr. Lyman Beecher Todd, a cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln, according to Boston-based RR Auction firm, which is handling the sale.

Less than a week after the Civil War ended, on the evening of April 14, 1865, Lincoln, accompanied by his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, and a young Army officer and his fiancé, went to the Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C., to see popular actress Laura Keene perform in “Our American Cousin.” At 10:15 p.m., famous actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth entered the president’s private box and fired his single-shot .44 caliber Derringer pistol into the back of Lincoln’s head.

Booth leapt on to the stage — breaking his leg in the process — shouting “Sic semper tyrannis” (“Thus ever to tyrants!”–the Virginia state motto). The mortally wounded president was taken to the Peterson boarding house across the street from the theater, where he was laid across a bed. Lincoln died the next morning at 7:22 at age 56. Lincoln’s body was escorted by armed cavalry to the White House where a thorough autopsy was performed. Mary Todd Lincoln sent a note requesting a lock of her husband’s hair.

Lincoln’s assassination was later determined to part of a conspiracy to decapitate the United States federal government, cooked up by Booth and four other conspirators, who would later hang for their role in plotting Lincoln’s murder. Booth was killed ten weeks earlier trying to escape from the shooting. The same evening Lincoln was assassinated, Secretary of State William Seward survived a brutal knife attack by Booth co-conspirator Lewis Powell.

The lock of Lincoln’s hair up for auction is sandy brown, streaked with gray, unlike the dark mane that appears in Mathew Brady black-and-white photographs. The tuft is mounted to an official War Department telegram sent to Dr. Todd by George H. Kinnear, his assistant in the Lexington, Ken., post office received in Washington at 11 p.m. pm April 14, 1865, according to the auction firm. A typed caption prepared by Dr. Todd’s son reads, in part: "The above telegram…arrived in Washington a few minutes after Abraham Lincoln was shot.

Apparently the tress clipped for Mary Todd wasn’t the only hair clipped off Lincoln’s head during the postmortem. Dr. Todd was also at Lincoln’s deathbed and present for the autopsy. Another lock, perhaps one of many, was cut from Lincoln’s head and given to Dr. Todd, who had grown close to the president before the Civil War. In another version, Dr. Todd was handed a pair of scissors and asked to clip some tresses for Mrs. Lincoln, and clipped one for himself, which he kept as a “sacred relic.” Finding no paper to put the hair in, Dr. Todd wrapped it in the assassination telegram.

A similar Lincoln tuft fetched $15,000 in a 2015 auction. The “Abraham Lincoln Lock of Hair and ‘Bloody’ Assassination Telegram” will be auctioned live Saturday, Sept. 12, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. Online bids will be taken until Sept. 11, or schedule a live phone bid at 603-732-4280.

RR Auction deals in rare documents, manuscripts, autographs and historic artifacts. In June, the auction house fetched record prices for a lunar surface watch ($1.625 million), JFK’s diary ($718,750), an Apollo hand control ($610,00) and Mario Puzo’s Godfather archive ($625,000).