By David J. Kent
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, September 12, 2024
Most Lincoln Group of DC members have heard of Charles Forbes. But did you know that LGDC is the reason Forbes has a memorial marker stone in Congressional Cemetery? The LGDC archives have proof!
Forbes was a clerk-messenger at the Treasury Department when Lincoln was inaugurated and shortly thereafter was detailed to the Executive Mansion as the new president’s “personal attendant,” writes LGDC member James O. Hall in the September-October 1983 Lincolnian newsletter. Forbes’s duties ranged from a footman, valet, messenger, and, as it said on many a job description, “other duties as assigned.” One of those duties was to accompany Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln and their guests, Major Henry Rathbone and Miss Clara Harris, to Ford’s Theatre on the evening of April 14, 1865. The official guard, John Parker, was missing from his station, leaving only Forbes outside the box watching the comedic play Our American Cousin.
We all know what happened after that.
Forbes later worked in the War Department under Secretary of War, Robert T. Lincoln (yes, that Robert Lincoln) until his death on October 11, 1895. He was buried in Congressional Cemetery with his wife in a single unmarked grave.
Enter the Lincoln Group of DC. James Hall reported in that same newsletter that LGDC was raising money to erect a suitable marker stone over Forbes’s grave. This was done, and in the January-February 1984 Lincolnian there is an article by George H. Landes, Jr., reporting on the ceremony held to dedicate the stone.
“At noontime on a cold and windy November 12, the 4th Maryland Patuxent Brass Band led fifty members and friends of the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia to the gravesite of Charles Forbes, Lincoln’s personal attendant and messenger, at the historic Congressional Cemetery in Northeast Washington, D.C.”
Landes goes on to say that the event culminated an effort begun earlier in 1983.
“The impetus of the effort was the locating of the...grave…by Lincoln assassination historian James O. Hall. At President Edward Steers’ request, Mr. Hall headed a very successful drive to obtain funds for an appropriate memorial stone. More than forty persons and organizations generously contributed to the project.”
[Photo by David J. Kent, taken during Craig Howell tour for LGDC, 2018]
[Note: This post is a preview of a more comprehensive article that will appear in the next Lincolnian newsletter. It was stimulated by a question posed through our website. Future “From the Archives” posts and articles will appear periodically as we dig through LGDC’s archival records. If you have a specific memory you would like to hear about, feel free to reach out to LGDC Historian David J. Kent.]
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