Two tickets for front-row seats at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865, the night President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, sold at auction for $262,500, according to a Boston auction house out.
The tickets are stamped with the date: “Ford’s Theatre, April 14, 1865, tonight only.” On the left side of them are stamped “Ford’s Theatre, Friday, Gown Circle!” Parts filled in in pencil, according to RR Auction (“D”) and seat numbers “41” and “42”.
Auction officials said the handwritten seat assignments and the circular stamp dated April 14 matched those found on other known authentic tickets, including old ticket stubs in the collection of Harvard University’s Houghton Library.
The Harvard stub, consisting of only the left half of the ticket, is the only used April 14 Ford’s Theater ticket known to still exist, with a similar seating assignment penciled in and stamped with the same Stamps is closed on Saturdays.
Just after 10 p.m., in the third act of the play “Our American Cousin,” Booth entered the presidential box at a Washington, D.C., theater and shot Lincoln.
As Lincoln slumped forward in his seat, Booth jumped on the stage and fled out the back door. A doctor in the audience examined the ailing president and carried him across the street to the Peterson House, where he died early the next morning. Booth eluded capture for 12 days but was eventually found and shot to death on a farm in Virginia.
Also sold at Saturday’s auction was a first-edition “Lincoln-Douglas Debate” signed by Lincoln, which sold for nearly $594,000.
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