A Second Look
By Richard Cashman
Some people believe you can see a young Theodore Roosevelt looking down on Lincoln’s Funeral from a window in his grandfather’s house. It’s a fun story, but is it true?
It all started with this photo showing the back of Theodore Roosevelt grandfather’s house off Union Square at the southwest corner of Broadway and 14th Street in New York City.
If you look carefully you can see two images in an open window on the second floor. Some believe that’s Theodore Roosevelt and his brother Elliott. However, when you enlarge the photo neither image looks anything like a young TR.
During the funeral Theodore Roosevelt had nieces and nephews living in the house at the time. Add in the staff and you wind up with a variety of possibilities beyond TR.
Above all, Theodore Roosevelt never said he saw Lincoln’s Funeral. You won't find it in the Roosevelt Papers at the Library of Congress. It’s not in his autobiography and while TR wrote more words than Shakespeare, Faulkner, Hemingway, Dickens and Melville combined, there isn't one word on seeing Lincoln’s Funeral. It’s not in any article, column, or speech including the one he gave in 1903 standing in front of Lincoln’s grave at Oak Ridge Cemetery. It doesn’t appear in any of his over 150,000 letters and it's not in the Roosevelt Collection at Harvard. TR got to know Lincoln's only surviving son Robert, but there's no record he told Robert he saw his father's funeral.
If TR never said he saw the funeral where did it come from? It came from one person and one person only. It came from photojournalist Stefan Lorant. Lorant was collecting images of Lincoln in the New York Public Library when he came across the photo of TR’s grandfather’s house. It was Lorant who first speculated it could be a young TR looking out the window. If that was true Lorant hit pay dirt.
Stefan Lorant was a man with a larger than life persona, but he was also a man with a reputation for being reckless with the truth. He said he came to America after being mistreated in Britain, but associates claim he fled from being investigated for tax evasion. He claimed he gave Marlene Dietrich her first screen test, but the story has no verification and even his biographers consider it another one of his myth making tall tales. He was caught using historically inaccurate images to shape public opinion. For decades he claimed he had a photo of Lincoln shown in an open casket until it was positively proven to be an 1868 photo of Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stephens
Lorant said he visited TR’s widow Edith to ask if it was her husband looking out the window.
On the day of the funeral Edith was 3 years, 8 months, 2 weeks and 5 days old. The day Lorant said he showed Edith the photograph she was 84 and not at her best. According to Edith’s biographer, Sylvia Jukes Morris, Edith was having difficulty balancing her checkbook and needed help writing letters. She mistook her grandson for the son she lost shot down over France in WWI.
According to Lotant during his visit with the former First Lady he asked Mrs. Roosevelt: “Did you ever hear that your husband saw President Lincoln’s Funeral?” He saud, “she looked at the picture and the two little heads in the window. Her face lighted up as her memories jumped back to that day in 1865. She said, “Yes, I think that is my husband, and next to him his brother.”Lorant said Edith told him she was there at the house, but isn't in the photo because when she began to cry “they took me and locked me in a back room. I never did see Lincoln’s Funeral.
It was a remarkable revelation coming from the wife of Theodore Roosevelt. It instantly turned Lorant's photo into the greatest discovery of his life and turned the image into a financial goldmine. Yet Lorant, who made his living publishing photographs, decided to wait 10 years until after Edith’s death before making his discovery public.
Lorant published the image in the June 1955 issue of American Heritage Magazine and again in 1959 in his book, “The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt.”
Edith never wrote she met the photojournalist, or saw the photograph. Failing to publish the image while Edith was alive made Lorant the only source of the story. It’s a remarkable recollection from an 84 year old remembering the details of an event that took place 81 years earlier when she was a 3 ½ year old preschooler learning shapes and colors. The recollection becomes even more remarkable knowing Edith was having trouble remembering how to balance her checkbook.
Beginning in October 1927 until nearly the end of her life Edith watched as her husband was being carved into Mt. Rushmore. During those 14 years Edith never said a word she was with TR on the day he saw Lincoln’s Funeral from a window in his grandfather’s house. Did it happen? A lot of people say it did. You decide. It’s what makes history so much fun. It’s a great detective story.
