Account of Captain Edwin Eliaphron Bedee, in the Union army who was part of the historic tragedy witnessed President Lincoln get shot at Ford's Theatre.

Captain Edwin Bedee (1837-1908)

Captain Bedee was seated in the second row on the left side of the theatre in the back of the orchestra. A commanding view could be had of President Abraham Lincoln watching the play. The sound of a shot rang out above the actor's voice on stage. Captain Edwin Bedee stared as a man vaulted from the President's box onto the stage.

Little did  Edwin Bedee, 12th Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteers, know when he enlisted, August 18, 1862, in Meredith, New Hampshire, that he would witness the tragic shooting of one of American's greatest Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, on the fateful day of April 14, 1865.

When Captain Bedee saw the man drop onto the stage from the President's box, his first reaction was to pursue the fleeing assassin. Instead, Bedee, like the rest, listened as Booth boldly uttered the incredible words, "Revenge for the South!"

Sensing a catastrophe, Captain Bedee sprang from his chair, climbed over some rows, bolted past the orchestra and footlights, and across the stage in the direction Booth had disappeared.

A scream shattered the mounting noise. "They've got him!" Bedee presumed the assassin was caught. Another scream. It was Mrs. Lincoln.

"My husband is shot!" A doctor was called for. Captain Bedee reeled around and bounded across the stage towards the box. As he was scaling the box, a man appeared and stated he was a physician. Captain Bedee stepped aside, pushed the doctor up to the railing, and followed directly behind. Had the Captain not given assistance to the surgeon, he would have been the first to reach Lincoln. The only entrance to the box was believed locked by Booth when he slipped in to do his foul act, which apparently kept anyone from hastily entering from the outside passageway.

President Lincoln lay reclined in his chair, his head tilted back as though he were asleep. The doctor searched for the wound seeking some evidence of blood or torn clothing, the surgeon started to remove Lincoln's coat and unbutton his vest. Meanwhile, Captain Bedee was holding the president's head. Suddenly, he felt a warm wetness trickling into his hand. "Here is the wound, doctor," Captain Bedee said as one of his fingers slid into the hole in the back of Lincoln's head where the ball had only moments before forced an entry.

During the removal of some of the president's clothing, papers fell from his pocket. Mrs. Lincoln, apparently rational in spite of the shock of the calamity handed the packet to Captain Bedee remarking, "You are an officer, and won't you take charge of these papers?" Captain Bedee took the papers while she removed others from her husband's inner pocket and placed them in Dedee's hand.

By now others had gained entrance to the box through the door. One was a surgeon. Together the two doctors worked over the President and then Lincoln was removed to the house across the street from the theater, Bedee helped carry the dying man. He waited at the house where Secretary of War Stanton was soon to arrive. Upon the Secretary's arrival, Captain Bedee delivered the papers to him writing his own name and regiment upon the wrapper which Stanton placed around the documents. Secretary Stanton gave the Captain two assignments: first to go to the War Department with a message, and secondly, to contact the officer in command at Chain Bridge on matters dealing with the escaping assassin.

When the missions were completed Captain Bedee returned to Stanton. The Secretary thanked him for his diligence in handling the duties assigned to him and also for caring for the President's papers. He was then told to return to his post of duty.

The following day Captain Bedee was with his regiment. That evening an officer brought an order for the Captain's arrest. Apparent misunderstanding of the connections between Bedee, Lincoln's papers, and the assassination had made him a suspect within the War Department. Captain Bedee was so distraught that he telegraphed the department explaining the situation.

For two days Captain Bedee was kept under arrest. Finally, his release came, with an explanation of the confusion. Immediately the Captain wrote Secretary Stanton a personal letter stating that his honorable record during the war years would now have a very serious blemish if the details were not clarified. The Secretary wrote back explaining the error caused by the lower echelon in his department and gave proper acknowledgment to Captain Bedee for the commendable acts performed by him in the handling of Lincoln's papers. Thus the good captain was completely exonerated from any suspicious association with the murder of President Lincoln.

How did Captain Bedee happen upon this sorrowful moment of American history?

Edwin Bedee was born in Sandwich, New Hampshire, and grew up in the area. he was a printer by trade prior to the war. At 24 he enlisted and spent three months in a New York regiment but hastily returned to Meredith upon his release to join the 12th Volunteers, wanting to be with fellow New Hampshire men.

Mustered in as a sergeant major of the regiment, Bedee was soon promoted to the rank of first lieutenant. At the battle of Chancellorsville, he was wounded and yet assumed command of his regiment when those higher in command were either killed or unable to lead.

At Chancellorsville, Bedee's ability to make decisions under the pressure of battle was recognized, and he was promoted to captain. A year later, at Cold Harbor, Virginia, Captain Bedee was severely wounded. Recovering from his wounds, Bedee went back to action. This time he was captured at Bermuda Front, Virginia. He was paroled in February of 1865. Shortly thereafter, Captain Bedee was selected to serve on the staff of General Potter and went to Washinton on special duty. On Friday evening, April 14, 1865, be decided to attend Ford's Theatre.

The play was "Our American Cousin." It was being performed for the last time. Captain Bedee was fortunate to obtain a seat for the house was sold out. In fact, his seat gave him a full view of the President's box and its occupants. Because the audience was laughing at the antics on stage at the time, few heard the shot that felled the President.

A month after this tragic and involved affair, Captain Bedee was promoted to the rank of Major. Soon he was mustered out of the army along with his regiment.

When the war was over, Major Bedee caught the speculating craze and was lured to the South African diamond fields. But within a few years, he sold out, returning to Boston, and established himself as a successful diamond trader.

During his later years, Major Bedee, now a man of moderate wealth gave generously to the churches and other institutions in the town of Meredith. He purchased a statue in honor of the 12th Regimental Volunteers and had it placed on the lawn of the Meredith Public Library.

Major Bedee died at the famous Pemigewassett House in Plymouth, New Hampshire, on January 13, 1908, just five days after his 71st birthday. He never married. His body lies in the Meredith cemetery beneath a simple monument.

Little, if any, recognition has even been given Major Bedee in many accounts written on Lincoln's death because his role was that of a dutiful officer acting in a crisis. Had the circumstances surrounding Lincoln's personal and official papers not been so minor in the wake of such a tragic event, Major Bedee might have become nationally exposed as a suspect in the plot to assassinate President Lincoln. His innocence brought oblivion.

A typical style of many Civil War statues. Major Edwin E. Bedee's monument to the 12th New Hampshire Volunteer Regiment has a colorful history. The regiment participated in many of the fiercest battles of the Civil War, including Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Cold Harbor. Local soldiers reportedly sustained the highest percentage of casualties of any unit in the Union Army. Major Bedee himself was injured twice and later spent several months in a Rebel prison camp. Bedee paid for the statue because he wished "to keep alive the memory of our fallen brave."

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Plaza Hotel, 1553 North Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois.

Perhaps the most quintessential Warren hotel, the Plaza was built from 1891-92 at 1553 N. Clark Street, at the southeast corner of Clark and North Avenue. The Plaza was an eight-story hotel with 100-foot frontage on North Avenue and 225 feet of frontage on Clark Street. The hotel was erected in three sections separated by light wells, with oriels and bay windows providing additional light, breezes, and views.

Note the Hasty Tasty Coffee Shop. 1964

The Plaza follows closely the plan, exterior form, and general functional arrangement of the two Michigan Avenue hotel buildings, the Metropole and the Lexington. The uniformity and the regularity of the street elevations make this hotel one of Warren's best.

Like Warren’s other work, particularly the Metropole, Lexington, and Kenmore Apartments (at 47th and Lake Park), the hotel prominently featured six of Warren’s trademark rounded, cylindrical corners along Clark Street, which extended turret windows from the second floor to the flat, corniced roofline. Unlike several of Warren’s other buildings, the hotel was situated on the northwest edge of one of Chicago’s wealthiest and most desirable neighborhoods—the Gold Coast—and afforded its guests excellent views of the lake and Lincoln Park.

The fortunate positioning of the hotel in a stable neighborhood allowed it to be more economically successful throughout its life. Ernest Hemingway courted his first wife Elizabeth Hadley Richardson at the Plaza shortly before they moved to Paris in the early 1920s. The Hemingways had their honeymoon at another Warren building, the nearby Virginia Hotel. Even as other Warren hotels suffered from age and neglect after World War II, the Plaza remained a mostly respectable hotel until its final years.

In the mid-1960s, a large urban residential redevelopment project called Sandburg Village to the south and west of the hotel changed the dynamic of the area. The land and prominent corner that the Plaza occupied became more valuable than the aging facility could sustain. 

In 1968, the Plaza was razed. The private Latin School, an exclusive, non-sectarian private college preparatory high school was built on the site.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Transfer Station in Decatur, Illinois.

 The station being moved to its new location.

The Transfer House is a historic structure situated in Central Park in Decatur, Illinois. It was built in 1896 and designed by William Boyington, who also designed the Chicago Water Tower. It served as one of the main electric streetcar transfer stations in the city.

Decatur was an early adopter of streetcar electrification. In 1889, the Citizens' Street Railway became the Citizens' Electric Street Railway, with a plan to electrify its horsecar lines. Electric streetcar service began on August 28, 1889. In 1891, the company was reorganized as the City Electric Railway. This became the Decatur Traction and Electric Company in 1899. It was sold to the William McKinley interests, which became the Illinois Traction System (ITS), in 1900. After December 1903, the company was known as the Decatur Railway and Light Company.

The Transfer House was erected in 1895, replacing a smaller shelter dating from 1892. The City Electric Railway paid $500 toward the $2700 building fund subscribed by local merchants and property owners and agreed to furnish and maintain the building. As its name implies, it was used as a central transfer point for all the streetcar lines (and later the bus lines) in the city.

The structure became a main focal point in the city and community events and gatherings were held at the square. Three presidents gave speeches from the open-air bandstand on the second level. The structure was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

Ridership on the streetcar and interurban lines declined in the 1950s and the Transfer House became a bus station. It was moved to Central Park in 1962 and renovated in the 1970s. It remains a landmark in the city today.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The History of the House of Sunshine, 1200 East Union Avenue, Litchfield, Illinois.

The House of Sunshine is a symbol of goodwill. It was in the early 1920s that a small publishing business was started in Litchfield (45 miles North-northeast of St. Louis, Missouri), based on the theory that goodwill is more surely the basis of success for the business and professional man today than it was two thousand years ago when the Man of Galilee went about spreading sunshine.

This idea resulted in the issuing, in January 1924, of the initial number of a publication which shortly after was named "Sunshine Magazine." At the same time an auxiliary business publication, called "Rays of Sunshine," was issued, intended for distribution by business and professional men as a means of manifesting goodwill to patrons and prospects. This was the result of a study by H.F. Henrichs, who had for a number of years been a newspaper editor and publisher, and also a newspaper business broker.

The idea clicked, and the circulation of Rays of Sunshine grew so rapidly that before long four additional monthly publications were launched.

The mechanical production of these publications proved to be a problem. Various places in Litchfield helped in this capacity. While the editorial office was first located over Walter Holderread's drug store, corner of State and Ryder Streets, the forms for printing the publications were imposed in a small printing plant owned by Max Sallee, located in the rear of his father's optometry office on West Kirkham Street. The actual printing was done in the News-Herald plant.

Later, printing equipment was acquired and installed in a rear room of the old Litchfield Hotel, formerly occupied by Mrs. Ellen (Heise) Roberts as a restaurant. But after a few months the shop was moved to a small room in the Holderread Building, near Dr. Blackwelder's office.

Finding this arrangement inadequate, the shop was sold, and the printing of the Sunshine publications was let to a large publishing house in St. Louis, Missouri. The editorial office was moved to the Allen Building, opposite the Post Office, and later to the Pappmeier Building, on the south side of the Carnegie Library square.

The publications had grown to proportions of national aspect, with sponsors in various parts of the country. It became evident that new quarters were necessary to give the business more room and the needed atmosphere. This led to the construction, in 1940, of the House of Sunshine, which immediately attracted wide attention. But the business soon outgrew what at first appeared to be spacious quarters.

In 1948 the owners acquired the 10-acre park area in the eastern section of Litchfield from the Davis estate and later purchased additional acreage from Charles Sammons, for the purpose of providing larger quarters for the enterprise.

Early in its history, the publishing business was divided into two partnerships, viz., The Sunshine Press, publishing Sunshine Magazine, and The Henry F. Henrichs Publications, producing a line of goodwill business "magazets," a word coined by the owners. Members of the Henrichs family constituted the two co-partnerships.

The House of Sunshine was designed in the motif of the Norman Early American classics. Its architecture is authentic, and unusual in American building construction. Many of its appointments and decorations, both exterior and interior, are of the original design. The second-floor studio includes an amplifying sound system, electric organ, piano, antique music boxes, and tape recording equipment. The public entertainment features are offered solely for civic and patriotic reasons, intended to contribute to the welfare and goodwill of the community."

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Monarch Pipe and Welding Company, 730 West Harrison Street, Chicago, December 1946.

Note the Chicago Street Paver Bricks and Street Car Tracks.

The Monarch Pipe and Welding Company stood at 730 West Harrison Street, a predominately Greek neighborhood. This building would not last much past 1955 when the demolition of the neighborhood began to build the Dwight D. Eisenhower Expressway, 29.84 miles completed in 1972, and in 1978, signed as Interstate 290. 

"The geography of Greektown has changed dramatically over the years, as it once was sprawling and much larger than the few city blocks it encompasses today. 

In the 1960s the construction of the Eisenhower Expressway and the University of Illinois at Chicago displaced the ethnic neighborhood and forced it to move a few blocks north and much of the neighborhood disbursed to other existing Greek settlements such as Ravenswood, Woodlawn, and South Shore. Today, the small strip on Halsted is typically hailed as the heart of Greektown as the Willis Tower (Sears Tower) looks over the town in the distance." 

Today: City of Chicago Cermak Pumping Station, 730 West Harrison Street, Chicago.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.