Fred Petersen was rumored to have cut up the President's shirt, the bloody sheets, and the towels laid over his pillows to distribute among relic seekers, who were charged admission to enter his father's boarding house. (KUNHARDT AND KUNHARDT, Twenty Days 97)

Petersen house tenant William Clark acquired "a piece of linen with a portion of [Lincoln's] brain." (OLDROYD 37) The Gunther fragment has an unusual woven pattern that matches other alleged death towel swatches at the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana and the Chicago Historical Society.

Towel fragments attributed to Lincoln's deathbed at the Chicago Historical Society (left) and the Lincoln Museum (above right). Photograph above right appears courtesy of the Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, IN (945b).
A certificate from W.S. Kaufman describes how he met Wm. F. Peterson, son of the boarding house owner, when they served on the federal ironclad ship Roanoke in 1865.

Steam- powered ironclads were a Civil War technological innovation, marking the transition between wind- powered wooden boats and modern naval vessels. Although ironclads were typically mass-produced in identical components, the Monitor was a converted wooden ship, top-heavy and a poor sea boat, that served primarily in a harbor defense role. Kaufman was appointed assistant engineer and Petersen served as surgeon's steward, dispensing medicines to the ship's crew; a review of the ship's roster is pending. Kaufman relates:

"Ironclad Ship Sea Battle," Illustrated London News, c. 1863
About the 20th of April, I was in the dispensary conversing with Peterson when he received a package from his home in Washington, accompanied by a letter stating that the package contained a towel that had been bound about the head of Lincoln to staunch the flow of blood from the wound he had received. Young Peterson immediately proceeded to parcel out small pieces of the towel to the officers of the vessel, and being present at its receipt, I was the first favored by the piece enclosed in the accompanying frame. KAUFMAN