Samuel J. Seymour

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Samuel James Seymour (c. 1860–April 14, 1956) was the last surviving person who had been present in Ford's Theatre the night of the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. He lived in Arlington, Virginia in his later years.

At age five, Seymour's godmother, Mrs. George S. Goldsborough, had taken him to see Our American Cousin. He claimed the two sat in the balcony on the side opposite Lincoln's box. Seymour reported that at the time of the assassination he at first thought that he himself had been shot. This was due to his nurse, while trying to fix a torn place in his blouse, having stuck him with a pin at the moment of the gun's discharge.^{[citation needed]} Seymour did not actually see the assassination but did witness Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth jump off the balcony and break his leg. In fact, he revealed that because he did not know Lincoln was shot or that Booth had shot him, his real concern was for Booth breaking his leg.

Two months before his death at age 96, he appeared on the CBS TV quiz show I've Got a Secret as a mystery subject. Coincidentally, Seymour died ninety-one years to the day of Lincoln's assassination.