Mary spent the rest of her life grieving for her husband and three young sons who had died, communing with her lost loved ones through spiritualists. She became so unsettled that Robert, her only surviving child, committed her to an insane asylum. Chicago lawyer Myra Bradwell eventually secured her release, and Mary took up residence in her sister's Springfield home until her death in 1882.
Mary's great niece remembered the widow packing and repacking her White House relics by candlelight:
In the room next to her, Aunt Mary had 64 trunks. Grandmother's maid left because she was afraid to sleep under that room, with all that weight. The trunks were filled with bolts of curtain materials and dress goods... She wouldn't stop buying. Once she bought 300 pairs of gloves at one time and two dozen watches. She had about a hundred shawls. Every day she got up and went through those trunks for hours. (KUNHARDT et al, Lincoln 396)
Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone married a year after Lincoln's death.
Henry grew increasingly despondent over his failed attempt to stop John Wilkes Booth, blaming himself for the president's death. Tormented by paranoia and delusions, Henry eventually stabbed Clara to death, and was confined to an insane asylum until his death. Following her tragic death, Clara's blood stained Ford's Theatre dress became the subject of several ghost stories.
Clara Harris Rathbone, c. 1875 (ICHi-30485).
Marketing of the relics began almost immediately after the president's death. William Petersen charged admission to curious visitors who came to see Lincoln's deathbed, where a tenant still slept at night. Petersen's home became a tourist attraction, but his boarders soon abandoned the property. Burdened by increasing financial difficulties, Petersen died of an overdose of laudanum, a popular nineteenth century opiate, on the lawn of the Smithsonian Institution.
Lincoln and the Civil War became the focus of an idealism that was increasingly missing in Chicago's expanding commercial culture. (KARAMANSKI xiv)
Chicago entrepreneur Charles Gunther understood this appeal and began acquiring Lincoln relics to display in his 1880s State Street candy emporium.
Watch attributed to Abraham Lincoln. (CHS 1917.7)
