Tl;dr a picture in which a historian spotted 7-year old Teddy Roosevelt watching Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession from the window of his grandfather's house in New York. Very cool story!
When I hear the name Lincoln now, I can't help but think of the fake Letterboxd review of Melania: "the worst experience I've had at a theatre." By Abraham Lincoln.
The timeline doesn't match up here. We're told that historian Stefan Lorant was doing his research in the 1950s. Then we're told that he checked with Teddy Roosevelt's wife and got her confirmation that one of the children in the window was Teddy Roosevelt.
Roosevelt was married twice, and his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, died in 1884, so it's not her. But his second wife, Edith Carow, died in 1948, at age 87. So unless Lorant interviewed her posthumously, via seance, it can't be her, either.
Our best hope of rescuing this anecdote is to assume that Lorant's research happened earlier (1940s?) while Edith Carow Roosevelt was still alive. But she would have been just three years old at the time of Lincoln's funeral, and while her family and the Roosevelt's family socialized together, even her quoted reminiscence is less than definitive about whether that's actually TR.
Possible? Sure. Probable? Maybe. 100% verified? No way.
From what's presented to us, this sounds like a cool legend
This came up in a Reddit discussion a while back. Snopes has an article about it, in which they quote a source which says that the actual interview happened in 1948.
> But she would have been just three years old at the time of Lincoln's funeral, and while her family and the Roosevelt's family socialized together, even her quoted reminiscence is less than definitive about whether that's actually TR.
While she might not have direct memory of the event, it would not be unheard of for older relatives to explain the picture to her when she was older. Just because she doesn't remember it directly does not automatically make the story of the picture untrue.
So her recollection is that she was in the house to view Lincoln's funeral procession. She didn't, because she was three and got scared, but it was still an event she was a part of.
Even if she didn't remember whether Teddy was standing at that window at that time, she probably knew that she at Teddy and his brother were at the mansion for the event.
So we have the Roosevelt mansion, knowledge that not many boys would have been allowed to be in that window, and confirmation that Teddy Roosevelt was there watching at that time.
The blog article links Stefan Lorant's own recollection of the event, but the link is broken (fair enough, the blog entry is from 2010). Fortunately though, the link is archived on the Wayback Machine [0], where we can see it is an article from American Heritage, June 1955.
In the linked article Lorent does not specify when exactly he interviewed Edith Carrow Roosevelt, but I think it is fair to assume that the reference to "in the 1950s" is an assumption made by the author of the blog based on when the article was published, and does not cast any doubt on the timeline.
The past is so much closer than you think. We are only three human lifetimes away from the American Revolution. The last living children of American slaves were around into the 2010s. Back to Teddy, the last living person who could have met him was still around in the 2000s as well, meaning in your lifetime you could have talked to someone who knew someone who saw Abe Lincoln alive.
Indeed this is one of the things I most enjoyed when I first visited DC, the realization of just how recent these historical events really were. Standing on a battlefield in Gettysburg and thinking "This all happened in the 1860s, barely more than 100 years before I was born. I have relatives who lived in this area at that time, and only a few generations back."
When I talk to young people today, and realize how little they know about people and events that were major news when I was young, I understand how it happens. Even for me WW2 is just something from the history books, and yet it concluded just ~30 years before I was born. 30 years before today was 1996.
Our descendants are going to enjoy an enormous wealth of imagery and videos for events that will to them otherwise be just something from a history book. Just imagine what it would be like today if we could see videos of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, etc. Might knock the mythology down a peg or two, though.
"Our descendants are going to enjoy an enormous wealth of imagery and videos for events that will to them otherwise be just something from a history book. "
The question will be at some point, will they be able to tell it apart from AI generated fake ones? (and will they care?)
Already now youtube recommends me some obvious AI generated garbage as WW2 documentations.
And that was just garbage generated for attention (ad money).
Once big actors with money want to rewrite history and flood the web with fake images to spread certain narratives, then new challenges will arise.
I hope enough people still care about facts and guard them.
It's the "if you think the news is all lies, bullshit and agendas you should see the history books" meme.
Lord knows what falsehoods of today will become the official record of tomorrow never mind what lies of the past we just repeat because they're what got written down.
That's a good point. When I wrote my comment only my optimistic side was engaged ;-). The pessimistic side shares your concerns. I hope that we develop some technologically diffult-to-overcome solutions for preserving the integrity of media. Like methods for cryptographically signing raw content from a digital camera that guarantees it was produced by that hardware. Not a panacea, but a step in the right direction I think.
Weird thought: someone born in the 1800s was (most likely) alive when the first transformer model ran.
Emma Morano died April 15, 2017, the NIPS submission deadline for "Attention Is All You Need" was May 19, and a Wired article indicates they were testing models for quite a few weeks before then.
This image shows a close-up of the second story window (Courtesy the New York Times)
A 'close up' that is smaller and lower resolution than the main photo on the article, which is courtesy of the NY public library. NY Times isn't mentioned in the text at all. Is this entire article an LLM hallucination?
triceratops | 9 hours ago
xrd | 9 hours ago
WalterBright | 3 hours ago
GCA10 | 9 hours ago
Roosevelt was married twice, and his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, died in 1884, so it's not her. But his second wife, Edith Carow, died in 1948, at age 87. So unless Lorant interviewed her posthumously, via seance, it can't be her, either.
Our best hope of rescuing this anecdote is to assume that Lorant's research happened earlier (1940s?) while Edith Carow Roosevelt was still alive. But she would have been just three years old at the time of Lincoln's funeral, and while her family and the Roosevelt's family socialized together, even her quoted reminiscence is less than definitive about whether that's actually TR.
Possible? Sure. Probable? Maybe. 100% verified? No way.
From what's presented to us, this sounds like a cool legend
rootusrootus | 8 hours ago
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/roosevelt-lincoln-funeral/
dylan604 | 8 hours ago
While she might not have direct memory of the event, it would not be unheard of for older relatives to explain the picture to her when she was older. Just because she doesn't remember it directly does not automatically make the story of the picture untrue.
saalweachter | 4 hours ago
Even if she didn't remember whether Teddy was standing at that window at that time, she probably knew that she at Teddy and his brother were at the mansion for the event.
So we have the Roosevelt mansion, knowledge that not many boys would have been allowed to be in that window, and confirmation that Teddy Roosevelt was there watching at that time.
WalterBright | 4 hours ago
Mordisquitos | 8 hours ago
In the linked article Lorent does not specify when exactly he interviewed Edith Carrow Roosevelt, but I think it is fair to assume that the reference to "in the 1950s" is an assumption made by the author of the blog based on when the article was published, and does not cast any doubt on the timeline.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20060507100625/http://www.americ...
hyperpape | 4 hours ago
qingcharles | 3 hours ago
https://transfer.it/t/wCLoeh9XEZrZ
UncleSlacky | 8 hours ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20090107061334/http://www.americ...
Apparently she was 4 at the time and lived next door:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Roosevelt#Childhood
haroldp | 4 hours ago
Rebelgecko | 9 hours ago
cdot2 | 8 hours ago
Rebelgecko | 6 hours ago
UncleSlacky | 8 hours ago
ramesh31 | 8 hours ago
rootusrootus | 8 hours ago
When I talk to young people today, and realize how little they know about people and events that were major news when I was young, I understand how it happens. Even for me WW2 is just something from the history books, and yet it concluded just ~30 years before I was born. 30 years before today was 1996.
Our descendants are going to enjoy an enormous wealth of imagery and videos for events that will to them otherwise be just something from a history book. Just imagine what it would be like today if we could see videos of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, etc. Might knock the mythology down a peg or two, though.
lukan | 4 hours ago
The question will be at some point, will they be able to tell it apart from AI generated fake ones? (and will they care?)
Already now youtube recommends me some obvious AI generated garbage as WW2 documentations. And that was just garbage generated for attention (ad money). Once big actors with money want to rewrite history and flood the web with fake images to spread certain narratives, then new challenges will arise.
I hope enough people still care about facts and guard them.
cucumber3732842 | 4 hours ago
Lord knows what falsehoods of today will become the official record of tomorrow never mind what lies of the past we just repeat because they're what got written down.
rootusrootus | 3 hours ago
ButlerianJihad | 3 hours ago
bena | 7 hours ago
For me, that person would be 115 when I was born for our lives to overlap.
Yes, history is closer than we think, but it still moves on
alanbernstein | 6 hours ago
Xcelerate | 5 hours ago
Emma Morano died April 15, 2017, the NIPS submission deadline for "Attention Is All You Need" was May 19, and a Wired article indicates they were testing models for quite a few weeks before then.
lastofthemojito | 4 hours ago
I think his post that really got me was the 2021 headline, The Last Documented Widow of a Civil War Veteran Has Died: https://kottke.org/21/01/the-last-documented-widow-of-a-civi...
bmitc | 3 hours ago
WalterBright | 3 hours ago
qingcharles | 3 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War_widows_who_...
stavros | an hour ago
WalterBright | 49 minutes ago
fortran77 | 3 hours ago
fortran77 | 2 hours ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RPoymt3Jx4
jej_FundAlign | 7 hours ago
anigbrowl | 5 hours ago
A 'close up' that is smaller and lower resolution than the main photo on the article, which is courtesy of the NY public library. NY Times isn't mentioned in the text at all. Is this entire article an LLM hallucination?
landl0rd | 5 hours ago
rootusrootus | 5 hours ago
An article at the National Archives written in 2010? That would be remarkable.
m463 | 4 hours ago
It came with a card full of abe lincoln vs john f kennedy coincidences.
(I wonder if I still have it somewhere?)
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lincoln+kennedy+penny+card&iar=ima...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%E2%80%93Kennedy_coinci...
lubujackson | an hour ago
Also, a young Bill Clinton shaking JFK's hand. These sort of baton-passing moments are interesting to see from all sides.