Discoverer of the Only Known Photo of Lincoln in His Coffin Dies

By David J. Kent

Washington, D.C.

Monday, December 1, 2025

Ronald Rietveld passed away on November 27, 2025, at the age of 88. Rietveld was a professor of history at California State University–Fullerton for many years, although he is best known for his discovery at the age of 14 of the only known photograph of Abraham Lincoln in his coffin, taken April 24, 1865, as he lay in repose in New York during the long train ride back to Springfield.

Rietveld's discovery shocked historians. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton had barred photography of Lincoln's body out of respect for Lincoln, his distraught wife Mary, and his remaining two sons. When it was discovered that an unauthorized photograph had, in fact, been taken by photographer Jeremiah Gurney, Jr., while Lincoln lay in state in New York City, Stanton immediately ordered the destruction of all copies of the photograph. The photograph shows two men posing along with the coffin, with Lincoln's face clearly visible in the open casket.

While Stanton had the four-lens glass plate and any prints destroyed, he surreptitiously preserved one print, which his son kept for many years before giving it to Lincoln's former secretary John G. Nicolay, who with fellow secretary John Hay was working on the definitive biography of the sixteenth president. The photograph was put in the voluminous files the men had collected and forgotten for 90 years. That is, until an eager teenager enamored with the study of Abraham Lincoln came across it.

"I knew Lincoln photography fairly well at 14 and knew that this picture, if it was indeed a photograph, did not exist," Rietveld wrote in his reminiscences of the discovery. "I had a copy of the May 6, 1865, issue of Harper's Weekly at the time, in which the scene is sketched, because there were no photographs published."

Rietveld had attended the dedication of the Bollinger Lincoln Collection at the University of Iowa. Judge James W. Bollinger had been an avid Lincoln collector, and after reading about him in a Des Moines, Iowa, newspaper, the young Rietveld began a correspondence. That got him an invitation to attend the dedication of his collection, which led Rietveld to meet Lincoln scholars of the era such as Harry Pratt, Paul Angle, Louis Warren, Benjamin Thomas, and Harry Lytle, a friend of Judge Bollinger's from Davenport. Showing his acumen for Lincoln studies, Rietveld was subsequently invited to Springfield, Illinois, to see the Lincoln home. While there he visited the Illinois State Historical Library, which housed the Nicolay-Hay Papers donated to them by John Hay's daughter in 1943. Rietveld recalled:

"I came to a file called X:14. I'll never forget the number -- it's burned in my memory. Of course, the burning came later. I took it in, opened it up, and was reading Nicolay's notes about Mrs. Lincoln's visit to City Point [Virginia] and the fiasco that occurred there after her head had been hit on the top of a carriage during a very bumpy ride. When I finished, I saw an envelope laying there from 1887, sent from Minnesota to John Nicolay at Georgetown. I opened it and there were two pieces of regular stationery paper plus another piece of regular stationery folded in thirds; I laid the last piece aside. I read the first piece, which was the letter from Lewis H. Stanton to John Nicolay, saying in essence, "I have found this in my father's papers and perhaps you'd like to use it."

It was the photograph.

Ronald Rietveld went on to become a noted Lincoln historian himself. He received a PhD in history from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and after briefly serving as an assistant professor of history at Wheaton College, he became a professor of history at CalState-Fullerton for the rest of his career. When he retired in 2008, the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, Rietveld donated his own copy of the photograph and his notes from the day of his discovery to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.

As Lincoln scholars, we all dream of finding some significant, never-before-seen artifact related to Abraham Lincoln. Ronald Rietveld fulfilled that dream when he was only 14 years old.

[Photo courtesy of ALPLM. Post originally appeared on David J. Kent]