Imagine being able to listen to an individual tell you his story of valiantly getting his family to a lifeboat on the Titanic. Or hearing a woman describe the time she met Native American princess Pocahontas. How about having someone explain what it was like to be in battle with a member of the Hatfield or McCoy families?
Knowing how interesting these experiences would be makes it difficult to understand how most people donât know the name of Samuel Seymour, a man who actually witnessed Lincolnâs assassination and spoke about it on national television.
Samuel Seymour Talks About Lincoln Assassination
In Feb. 1956, Samuel Seymour made an appearance on the popular game show Iâve Got a Secret. It was essentially a game of â20 Questionsâ where celebrities tried to guess who a contestant was. On this specific episode, the panel of celebrities, including Lucille Ball, got to speak with a living piece of history.
In a piece published in the Milwaukee Sentinel, Seymour expanded on his experience and spoke of how, at the age of five, he had just gotten over his fear of being in grand Washington D.C. He says he regretted getting over this fear since it was only moments later that he heard one of the most influential and tragic shots ever being fired.
Unaware of what was going on, his first concern was for John Wilkes Booth, who he saw fall from the balcony. He also witnessed The Great Emancipator slumped over his seat after the shooting. He was the last living eyewitness to have seen Lincoln gunned down in Fordâs Theatre, and he would sadly die only 63 days after the above video was shot, a mere two days before the 91st anniversary of Lincolnâs death.
Fortunately, thanks to the Internet, this amazing piece of history will not be lost to the annals of time.
Special thanks to Vox. Feature image courtesy WikiCommons.
