Description:

Deringer Manufacturer's Son Disputes Philadelphia Architect's Claim of Owning Pistol that Killed Lincoln

In this intriguing letter to Lincoln collector Al Emmett Fostell, Calhoun M. Deringer refutes the claim by Philadelphia theatrical architect George Plowman (1832-1903) that he owns the weapon that Booth used to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln.

[LINCOLN ASSASSINATION.] Calhoun M. Deringer, Autograph Letter Signed, to Al Emmett Fostell, February 17, 1902, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1 p., 5" x 6.75", with mourning border. With Inscribed Cabinet Card Photograph of Deringer, February 22, 1902. 4.25" x 6.5". Some separation of photograph from card; very good.

Complete Transcript
1619 Spruce street, / Philadelphia:
Al. Emmett Fostell
166 East 103d st, New York City

Dear Sir:
Your favor 15th instant duly received, and in answer wld say that I will with pleasure give you the information desired and write it out in full; and also send you papers respecting Plowman and Galloway's pretensions to owning, and having in their possession the weapon Deringer, which Booth used to kill President Lincoln, and my refuting the same, which I trust will be satisfactory.
Yours truly,
Calhoun M. Deringer
February seventeenth / nineteen hundred two

[Photograph inscription:]
For A. Emmett Fostell, New York.
Compliments of / Calhoun M. Deringer, / 1619 Spruce street, / Philadelphia.
February twenty second / nineteen hundred two

Historical Background
In April 1865, actor John Wilkes Booth used a deringer pistol, made by Henry Deringer Jr. of Philadelphia, to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.

In 1901, in the wake of President William McKinley's assassination, Philadelphia theatrical architect George Plowman declared that he owned the deringer that Booth used to assassinate Lincoln. He said his former business partner obtained the deringer from James J. Gifford (1813-1894), a stage carpenter who was working at Ford's Theatre on the night of the assassination. Fearing he would be arrested, Gifford pocketed the deringer and kept it a secret until giving the weapon to George K. Goodwin, manager of the Walnut Street Theatre in Washington, three or four years after the assassination. When Goodwin died in 1882, his widow gave the deringer, which was a .36-caliber pistol measuring 4 inches in length, to Plowman, who had been her husband's business partner.

Theatre patron and government employee William T. Kent (1841-1917) found a .44-caliber deringer measuring 5.87 inches in length, on the floor of the Presidential Box when he returned to search for a missing room key. He turned it over to Lawrence A. Gobright (1816-1881), a reporter for the New York Associated Press, who turned it over to the Metropolitan Police. The Judge Advocate General's office used it as evidence in the trial of the conspirators in May and June 1865. When General Ulysses S. Grant III asked the War Department to loan the weapon for display in 1931, the adjutant general denied his request. In 1940, however, the War Department transferred the deringer and other pieces of evidence to the National Park Service for display at Ford's Theatre National Historic Site, where they went on display in 1942.

These two stories and stories of the discovery of several other pistols in and near Ford's Theatre have led to much speculation about whether Booth carried multiple pistols on the night of the assassination and dropped one or both at different places.

Calhoun M. Deringer (1824-1907) was born in Philadelphia, the son of Henry Deringer Jr. (1786-1868), the designer of the compact, large-caliber pistol, the deringer. He was a coal dealer in Washington, D.C. in the mid-1840s and active in the Masons. He was elected as lieutenant colonel of the 1st Pennsylvania Volunteers but did not serve. In 1867, he was appointed as Internal Revenue Assessor for the 2nd District of Pennsylvania.

Al Emmett Fostell (1856-1920) was born as Al Emmett Foster and began a career in 1872 as a minstrel show and variety performer. He changed his name in the 1870s and toured the South and West in the 1880s. He managed a theater in New Orleans for a time. In 1885, he joined Keith & Batcheler's stock company in Boston, where he met his wife, singer Florence Emmett. They began appearing together as Fostell and Emmett in 1887 as a German musical comedy team. Fostell also appeared in other variety ensembles. Their daughter Gilberta Fostell, with the stage name Vesta Gilbert, began performing with them in 1913, and Fostell retired from the stage in 1915. He also assembled a collection of historical memorabilia and toured his “Museum of Natural History” and Abraham Lincoln relics around the country for twenty years. He died in February 1920 after suffering a nervous breakdown.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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