Ford's Theater in Washington DC

     For our next call we visited Washington D.C/ Ford's Theater and we spoke with Alex. Our interviewer's were Emerson and Alyssa. The Ford's Theater was were President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

     We learned about the Presidential box where all the presidents would sit and about how many presidents had sat in it. When President Lincoln was assassinated many people thought it was part of the show. After the president died Mary Todd Lincoln, his wife, was so upset that she locked herself in a room in the White House for 40 days and did not attend his funeral. While she was locking herself up many doctors, family and friends visited her but couldn't convince her to leave. Eventually her son put her in an insane asylum because she couldn't handle Lincoln's death.

     After the assassination the government made the theater into a three story office building.  Later on in the 1930's they made the theater into a museum. In the 1960's they began to restore the theater.  In the 1960's-1968 they premiered  their first play since the accident. After that the theater became a hot spot because people wanted to see where the assassination happened. When they were restoring the theater they re-created it from crime scene pictures!
 
     Underneath the theater they have a museum containing  many old artifacts from the assassination , including the weapon John Wilkes Booth used to kill President Lincoln. On the President's  birthday they put a wreath on the stage to commemorate him.  They just uncovered a letter from the 1930's about an argument on wether the gun that was used to kill Lincoln should be displayed or not.

Lincoln and Mary had 4 sons. Unfortunately, 3 of their four sons died while Lincoln was alive. The first son who passed was Eddie from cancer. The next who died was Willie from thyroid fever. After their sons death Mary wore black the rest of her life and President Lincoln added a black strip on his hat.

We are so glad we got to call the Fords Theater and we learned so much! Thank you for calling us!

-Katherine, Reese