Another park service curator told The Washington Post in 2011 that she doubted the opera glasses would still have been on Lincoln’s person as he was carried across the street and that the case in which they fit may have been Mary Todd Lincoln’s.Why risk losing precious eyesight when wearing safety glasses or protective goggles can keep your eyes safe for a lifetime of good vision?Īccording to Prevent Blindness America, each year more than 700,000 Americans injure their eyes at work, and another 125,000 injure their eyes at home. It said the opera glasses “precisely fit” a case picked up in Lincoln’s box the night he was shot. They were handed down within the family from generation to generation.ĭocuments attesting to their authenticity include a 1968 letter from a National Park Service chief curator to McCamly’s great-great-grandson, who was seeking to verify family lore. It’s unclear whether he tried to return them amid the turmoil following the president’s death.
He found the binoculars in his pocket the next day. Something fell from Lincoln’s body and McCamly picked it up.
The story behind the artifact: After Lincoln was shot, McCamly was among those helping move the mortally wounded president from the theater to a building across the street. “He’s now in his 80s and he’s suffered some health issues and that’s why he called us,” Rau said. Rau said he had been contacted roughly two weeks earlier by the previous owner, who said he had paid $424,000 for the opera glasses at Christies’ auction house in 2002. Old hat - but maybe not Lincoln’s old hat “We deal in history and we deal in great pieces and this is one of the most exciting pieces we’ve ever owned,” Bill Rau, the third-generation owner of the century-old family business on Royal Street, said Thursday. James McCamly, a military officer believed to have picked the opera glasses up from the street after they fell from Lincoln’s near-lifeless body (it’s unclear if they were in the president’s hands or entangled in his clothing) as he was carried out of the theater on the night of April 14, 1865. Others include generations of descendants of Capt. Previous owners have included the Forbes family of publishing fame - the magazine reportedly paid $24,000 for them in 1979. Rau Antiques recently acquired the binoculars, known as opera glasses, from a seller who has remained anonymous.
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