Milford, Pennsylvania: The Columns Museum: Bloody Lincoln Flag

This flag came to Milford through Thomas Gourlay, the manager of Fords Theatre, who pulled it down to provide a makeshift pillow for Lincoln. Gourlay kept the bloody flag and gave it to his daughter Jeannie (an actress in the play that night). Jeannie Gourlay Struthers willed the flag to her son V. Paul Struthers, who donated it to the Museum. In 2015 the bloody flag was borrowed by Fords Theatre for the 150th anniversary of Lincolns assassination. They returned it along with a special display case they used in the exhibit. Another oddity at the museum is a display of birds stuffed by John Graham Bell, who taught Theodore Roosevelt the art. Bell worked closely with James Audubon.

The "Lincoln Flag" -- supposedly stained with his blood -- measures 153 x 104 inches and is made of wool. A fiber analysis indicated that the red bunting of the flag contains a natural dye used during the time of the Civil War. The Textile Conservation Workshop couched and mounted it on acid-free rollers in its special presentation case.

The Columns is a county museum that has a propensity for the macabre!

Its main artifact is the "Bloody Lincoln Flag," but also the noose used in the only public hanging in the town. Plus: 200 year old arsenic tainted birds. Rumors of the ghost of Juliette Peirce, the philosophers wife. Nightshirt belonging to the fattest man in the area -- a Mr. Cornelius, who was 645 pounds at death and was lowered into the ground by a crane. Mourning attire.

It's all housed in a 1904 neo-classical mansion on Broad Street in Milford, Pa.