American Artifacts Clip: President Lincoln's Overcoat - Yana Jaffe, Park Ranger

when President Lincoln was shot on April 14th 1865 he was wearing a black great coat made especially for his second inaugural by Brooks Brothers the coat is cared for by the National Park Service and periodically displayed in the Ford's Theatre Museum lobby American history TV documented the process of removing a replica coat and placing the original coat on display for the public and learned how the artifact is preserved for future generations so as you can see this is the box that holds the great coat and we are just about ready to put it in its special display case yeah we have a special storage area that we keep the great coat for half the year and we have it on display in February through the summer so we put it up right around the time of Lincoln's birthday which is this Saturday the 12th and then we have it up during our busiest season the spring season that's also the time of April when the assassination anniversary comes around the Cherry Blossom Festival so it's the busiest season of the year and then it stays through the summer stays just about six months and then we put it back into protective storage when the when the great code of Abraham Lincoln is not on exhibit at the Ford's Theatre it's housed here the code is fragile so it only goes on exhibit for a stretch of time it goes to six month on exhibit six month authored off exhibit so it's actually can rest and the resting place for the coat when it's relaxing is out here at the National Park Service Museum Resource Center so we have a specially made box designed for the coat so we can be in rest here so the fabrics can relax and we can the coat can be preserved longer much of the forged cedar collection comes from a private collector by the name of old room and one of the there's a variety of collect associated with him and his collecting of objects associated with the assassination of Lincoln so I see one that says presidential box flags the funeral train you don't necessarily have to open but I just wonder these are all from that one person's collection right we store all of our material in what are called acid free boxes these are pH balance paper we purchase them from a company in Fredericksburg Virginia and we you take off the box lid and inside the box you in inventory the objects that are in this box and you'll see that the artifacts have have been individually wrapped and in a very stable material this is a the the white is a tissue paper in inert paper and you have a plastic bubble type wrap to preserve and protect the object this is the acronym for Forge theater fo th and this is the catalog number so a researcher if if they were looking for a particular type of object we could search through the catalog number or for the object name in a database these are all this this these sets of tiers are associated with forge the air the vast majority the material from Ford's Theater is on exhibit at the at the forge Theatre in the basement we have a large exhibit hall there we also have a number of loans that are out out and out right now so the greatcoat itself is in this larger box however the condition coat is in right now the left sleeve is detached from it and so the smaller box holds that sleeve soon after the assassination you had relic hunters and souvenir hunters who immediately wanted pieces of it people immediately were trying to cut off tiny pieces of it it's owner Alfonso Dunn was about cutting off pieces himself and giving them to people so that when the Park Service received it in 1968 it was already in unfortunately very very delicate condition so we've found this approach helps so that we can preserve it that's our priority preserve it for present and future generations at the same time we do want to make sure that people actually get to see it and enjoy it by having it up during the spring we've made sure that the maximum amount of people can do that you can learn more about Ford's Theatre and take a virtual tour of their facilities at Ford's Theater org you can view additional American artifacts programs by visiting the c-span video library c-span video org and searching for American artifacts

Channel: C-SPAN

Views: 439,153

Rating: 4.2344561 out of 5

Keywords: overcoat, lincoln assassination, booth, ford's theatre, history, theater, widescreen, science, government, interviews, tourism, editing, documentary, educational, instruction, culture, politics

Id: N0tLdsVoAHw

Length: 5min 21sec (321 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2011