*Photos only

The Peterson House

Casey

What you need to know before you go
to the Peterson House.

Why in the world would you want to go to the Peterson house when you could do all these activities in Washington DC?  Well I can answer that one for you!  This historical site is actually where the sixteenth president ( Abraham Lincoln ) tragically died from a severe bullet injury located in the back of his head.  That injury turned from a severe injury to a fatal injury on April 15, 1865, at precisely 7:22 a.m.  He was only fifty-six years old.                                                                                                                  It all started at the Ford's Theatre.  John Wilkes Booth (the man who shot Lincoln) was a great actor but he went to where Lincoln was sitting and shot him.   John Wilkes Booth hid in a barn and the authorities hunted him down and burned him to his doom.    

  Well anyway ( right after Lincoln was shot but not dead ) the men  carrying the suffering body of the sixteenth president.  They had to form a human wall to keep the curious crowd from Lincoln.  These men had to stop every now and then so the surgeon could clean Lincoln's blood clots.  They could not find a place to lay down the president.  Then they saw a man waving a lit candle in the air.  This man is another famous man in history.  This man goes by the name of Henry Safford ( who was a young man. )        

Henry Safford was in the front room of the Peterson House.  Henry Safford was quietly reading.  He felt a disturbance outside and looked out the window.  He saw the men carrying the fatally injured president.  He raced to the door and got them to come inside.

Amazingly, John Wilkes Booth actually slept in the bed President Lincoln died on.  So when you come to the Peterson house you can actually see the bed John Wilkes Booth slept on and at the same time be looking at the bed Abraham Lincoln died on.                                                       

I learned that the beds were very small but this is why they had to lay Lincoln diagonally across the bed because he was six foot four.

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