re: Obscure/Interesting/Quirky "American" Facts 1865-1880

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Samuel James Seymour (March 28, 1860 – April 12, 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.

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When Seymour was five, his godmother, Mrs. George S. Goldsboro, took him to see Our American Cousin. He claimed the two sat in the balcony on the side opposite Lincoln's box.

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Once in the theater, Seymour settled down. He saw the President across the balcony as he was waving and smiling at people. Seymour said "I began to get over the scared feeling I'd had ever since we arrived in Washington, but that was something I never should have done. All of a sudden a shot rang out—a shot that always will be remembered—and someone in the President's box screamed. I saw Lincoln slumped forward in his seat." Seymour did not actually see the assassination but did witness Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth jump off the balcony. 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.

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Just two months before his death, at age 95, he appeared on the February 9, 1956 episode of the CBS TV quiz show I've Got a Secret as a mystery subject

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Moore generously awarded Seymour the $80.00 he would have won had he stumped the panel, and a can of Prince Albert pipe tobacco rather than the usual prize of a carton of Winston cigarettes (Winston was the show's sponsor, but Seymour did not smoke cigarettes).

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