Existing comment:
Spur:
On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater. As Booth tried to escape, he caught his foot in the bunting draped along the front of the presidential box. Samuel B. Reem picked up this spur from the theater's stage. It is believed to be one worn by Booth.
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U. S. NAVAL ACADEMY MUSEUM
118 Maryland Avenue
Annapolis, Maryland 21402-5034
USNA 51.18.1 Uniform: Footwear: Boot Spur: John Wilkes Booth (1838-65).
Material: steel
Color: steel gray
Dimensions: 1 1/8 x 4 5/8 x 3 inches
Maker: unknown
Country of origin: U.S.
Period/date: 1860s
Description: Rounded "Y-shaped" metal device or boot spur; slots for straps in both outer ends of the "U-shaped" shank; one side of the shank shows break and repair; slotted stem, post or neck holds 12-tooth wheel or rowel or prick which is riveted in place; general pattern commonly known as a "Prince of Wales" or English-style spur.
Source: Gift of D. L. Reem, 107 North Market St., Elizabethtown, PA, May 6, 1951.
Special condition of gift: Donated in memory of his grandnephew, 2d Lieutenant Robert Dale Reem, USMC (1925-50), NA Class of 1948; KIA Korea; MH
Historical significance: This boot spur was reputedly worn by the actor John Wilkes Booth (1838-65) on the night of April 14, 1865, when he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theater in Washington, DC. The President and Mrs. Lincoln were seated in a box located above the stage and the front of which was decorated with patriotic bunting. Booth entered from the rear of the box, shot Lincoln using a small Derringer pistol, and leapt through the box onto the stage below. His right foot got caught in the bunting and his left ankle was badly injured in the fall. This spur was pulled from the boot by the bunting and broke when it fell on floor below. U.S. Cavalry soldier Samuel B. Ream (1845-1927) of Pennsylvania, who was in the audience, picked up the pieces of the broken spur and kept it as a souvenir. At some later date he repaired the spur by welding.
The donation of this boot spur was accompanied by a handwritten statement signed by the donor and it reads:
"This stirrup (spur) is presented to the Museum of the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md., by D. L. Reem, Elizabethtown, Pa., in memory of 2nd Lieutenant Robert D. Reem, who graduated from Annapolis Academy, Class of 1948.
Lieutenant Reem was killed in Korea, November 6th, 1950, while serving with the U.S. Marines. This stirrup was picked up in Ford's Theatre, Washington, D. C. by Lieutenant Reem's great-great uncle, Samuel B. Reem, who was attending the play the night President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth.
The great-great uncle of Lieutenant Reem at the time was serving as a Union Soldier. The spur was later welded by Uncle Sam Ream, as he was known by his relatives, and was in his possession until 1927, when he died suddenly while attending a convention of the Grand Army of the Republic. Shortly after his death the spur came in possession of D. L. Reem, a great uncle of Lieutenant Reem.
Uncle Sam Ream was born at the Reem homestead at Rheems, Pa. in 1845. At nineteen he enlisted in the U.S. Cavalry for the duration of the Civil War. Returning from the war he went to Kansas where he lived the rest of his days. He taught school at Holton, Kansas, where Buffalo Bill (Bill Cody) also taught at the same time. Ream and Cody became very intimate friends. He followed the great scout in the circus business for several years. Later he returned to Holton, Kansas, and entered into business [soft drink bottling]. He never married, but spent much of his earnings assisting poor boys, bearing the expense of rearing and educating four boys, all of whom are living but one, who was only seventeen years old when Uncle Sam died. The young man mourned his death and died of a broken heart two weeks later. [According to a later newspaper article Sam Ream "dropped dead on a boat on Lake Michigan, while throwing coins to kids on the shore.]
During his career he served several terms in the Kansas Legislature. Since one of the descendants of S. B. Ream, has made such an unusual, short career, it is only fitting that this cherished relic be placed in the Annapolis Museum as a token of the patriotic deed performed by 2nd Lieutenant Robert Dale Reem on Nov. 6th, 1950." Signed: D. L. Reem.
Along with the boot spur D. L. Reem provided a press clipping from the Lancaster, PA, Sunday News, dated April 11, 1937, with an article titled "Booth's Broken Spur Owned by Man in Lancaster County." The article quotes a message written about the spur by Samuel B. Ream himself on the back of a carte de visite photograph of Daniel Snyder and himself [see USNA 51.18.2] which read:
"This stirrup (spur) was picked up by me in Ford's Theatre at Washington, DC, on the night Lincoln was shot. I was attending the play of the evening. Jumping from the box seat in the gallery, this stirrup caught in the American flag and threw him [John Wilkes Booth] to the stage below, tearing this from his foot. I picked both pieces up."
On a visit to the Lincoln Museum located in the old Ford's Theater on November 3, 1952, Captain Wade DeWeese, USN(Ret), then Director, U.S. Naval Academy Museum, saw a spur on exhibit identified as coming from a boot worn by John Wilkes Booth on the night he assassinated President Lincoln. DeWeese wrote the Lincoln Museum about this second spur and received the following reply:
"The spur on display was acquired by O. H. Oldroyd who spent a lifetime collecting Lincolniana. The Government purchased his collection in 1926 and it is now a part of the items at the Lincoln Museum. In William Benham's Life of Osborn H. Oldroyd, the circumstances surrounding the purchase of the spur are given as follows: ‘Mrs. Samuel Mudd received him [Oldroyd on a visit in 1901] cordially upon learning who he was and the nature of his errand. She told Captain Oldroyd that Dr. Mudd upbraided Booth for his rashness and told him that he had inflicted an irreparable injury to the South. She also said that when Booth arrived at their home his ankle and leg were so badly swollen that it was necessary to slit the bootleg to get his foot out of it. Speaking of the spur which was attached to the boot she said it was in the possession of a gentleman living about eight miles farther up the road. Bidding her adieu Captain Oldroyd continued his journey to the home of the possessor the spur and after some dickering with him he became the owner and possessor the relic at a cost of fifty dollars.'"
Later observers of both the spur in the Naval Academy Museum and the specimen in Ford's Theater point out that the two spurs are not a matching set. Correspondence in 1973 with Dr. Richard D. Mudd, a descendant of the doctor who treated Booth, stated that "from every account Booth only wore one spur and it is at Ford's Theatre." Of course, Dr. Mudd was only familiar with the story of the spur acquired by Osborn H. Oldroyd and sold with his collection to the Lincoln Museum in 1926.
In December 1975, John C. Brennan, who had corresponded with the Naval Academy Museum about the two different spurs and had concluded that Booth was too vain to have worn mismatched spurs, provided additional information about Booth and his spurs extracted from the records of the investigation of the Lincoln assassination. In a statement by James M. Pumphrey, the keeper of the stable where John Wilkes Booth rented a horse on April 14, 1865, he said "before he mounted he took out a brass spur and put it on his right foot. I could identify the spur if shown to me." Later in the record it states: "James M. Pumphrey being duly sworn makes the following statement. A spur being shown by Superintendent Richards of the Metropolitan Police the witness states ‘this to the best of my knowledge and belief this spur is the same that J. Wilkes Booth put on at my stable yesterday.'" This statement would have been given on April 15, and thus adds further confusion over how many different spurs Booth may have worn on April 14, 1865. This third spur could not be either the one then with Booth or Dr. Mudd, on April 15, in southern Maryland or the one collected at Ford's Theater by Samuel B. Ream. Perhaps it was simply a matching spur to the one James M. Pumphrey had observed Booth putting on his right boot the night before.
It could be that all three spurs were associated with Booth on April 14, 1865, and that he could have changed spurs and/or the boots themselves between his fleeing Ford's Theater, renting the horse, and arriving at Dr. Mudd's home. When he jumped from the box to the stage in the theater it is most likely that he injured the foot and leg opposite from the foot which caught in the bunting and from which he lost the spur. He would have damaged the leg on which he landed and which took the full weight of his body. Since it was his left leg injured, the spur collected from the floor by Samuel B. Ream probably came off the boot on the right foot. It is interesting that the stable keeper, James M. Pumphrey, testified that he observed Booth put a new spur on his right foot.
When Booth was treated by Dr. Mudd, the account indicated that the leg and foot were so swollen it was necessary to cut the boot to remove it. If this was the same boot from which the spur was later collected by Dr. Mudd's neighbor and subsequently purchased by Captain Oldroyd, it would have been from the left boot.
No evidence has been produced to prove that the spur, which U.S. Cavalryman Samuel B. Ream said he collected at Ford's Theater on the night of April 14, 1865, is not authentic as having been worn by Booth that night. As a cavalryman, too, Ream would have had more than passing knowledge of spurs. The fact that it does not match the second spur at Ford's Theater, proves that John Wilkes Booth wore more than one set of boots or more than one set of spurs on that fateful evening. The eyewitness record exists that after the assassination he added a new spur to his right boot before mounting a rented horse for his escape into southern Maryland. The Reem's spur remains in the U.S. Naval Academy Museum as an important historical object and as part of the memorial to Naval Academy alumnus Lieutenant Robert Dale Reem, USMC, killed in action in Korea and awarded the Medal of Honor.
References:
Chamlee, Jr., Roy Z. Lincoln's Assassins: A Complete Account of Their Capture, Trial, and Punishment. Jefferson, NC: McCarland & Co., 1990.
Guttridge, Leonard F. and Ray A. Neff. Dark Union: The Secret Web of the Profiteers, Politicians and Booth Conspirators That Led to Lincoln's Death. New York: Wiley, 2003.
Kauffman, Michael W. American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies. New York: Random House, 2004.
U.S. Naval Academy Museum documentation file 1951.018.001. |