April 14, 1865, President Lincoln went to see the play Our American Cousin at the Fords Theater.
At 10:15 pm President Lincoln was shot in the presidential box (below) by John Wilkes Booth.
Booth jumped from the box onto the stage and had gotten tangled in the flag and broke his ankle but was able to hobble to his horse in the back of the theater. Boothe was later found hiding in a barn in Fort Royal, VA by union soldiers the barn was set on fire and Booth was shot while in the burning barn.
This was the bed in the back bedroom of the Peterson's house that President Lincoln died in the next day. Because Lincoln was so tall he had to be laid across the bed.
What happened to Mary Todd Lincoln- In her life three of her four sons died, her husband was shot as he sat next to her. In 1875 she was judged as insane and admitted to a sanitarium for several months. She died in her sisters home in Springfield IL on July 16, 1882.
