The Connecticut Historical Society

Flag that decorated Lincoln's theater box the night of his assassination, after treatment. Courtesy: The Connecticut Historical Society Museum.

During an assessment of its Civil War collections in 1998, The Connecticut Historical Society  rediscovered a flag donated in 1922. Upon closer examination, they verified it as one of five flags that decorated President Abraham Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theatre the night of his assassination.

Despite having been left undisturbed in a box in storage, the silk flag was brittle with age and had split into fragments. The Textile Conservation Workshop in South Salem, New York, performed a conservation evaluation and treatment, which included humidifying the flag to relax the fragments so they could be correctly arranged on a supporting piece of fabric. The flag is now mounted on a frame and protected from further harm by a Plexiglas® case.