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kottke.org posts about Samuel Seymour

TV Appearance of Lincoln Assassination Witness

posted by Jason Kottke   Aug 04, 2011

In 1956, 96-year-old Samuel Seymour appeared on a game show called I've Got A Secret...his secret was that he saw Lincoln's assassination when he was five years old.

Mind-blowing...the Civil War & Lincoln's assassination directly linked to something as modern as a TV game show. That same year, Seymour gave an interview about witnessing the assassination to the Milwaukee Sentinel. His father was an overseer on a Maryland estate and his boss, Mr. Goldsboro needed to travel to Washington to check on "the legal status of their 150 slaves". Seymour got to go along.

I Saw Lincoln Shot

It was going on toward supper time โ€” on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 โ€” when we finally pulled up in front of the biggest house I ever had seen. It looked to me like a thousand farmhouses all pushed together, but my father said it was a hotel.

[...] When I finally had been rushed upstairs, shushed and scrubbed and put into fresh clothes, Mrs. Goldsboro said she had a wonderful surprise.

"Sammy, you and Sarah and I are going to a play tonight," she explained. "A real play โ€” and President Abraham Lincoln will be there."

After Lincoln was shot, Seymour saw Booth fall from the balcony and run off.