Original publish date: February 6, 2020
https://weeklyview.net/2020/02/06/lewis-gardner-reynolds-carnation-day-abraham-lincoln-part-2/
Last week the oft-forgotten holiday known as “Carnation Day” was detailed in Part I of this series. The holiday, today observed mostly only in Ohio, was created to commemorate assassinated President William McKinley on his birthday (January 29) by wearing his favorite flower, a red carnation, to honor him. The formal recognition of the holiday was due largely to the efforts of a man named Lewis Gardner Reynolds from Richmond, Indiana. In 1903, Reynolds formed the Carnation League of America to establish the custom of observing the McKinley floral holiday. That alone might be enough for most historical resumes, but not for Mr. Reynolds. Among this (and other noteworthy achievements) it should be noted that Reynolds was the last person to meet the living Abraham Lincoln.
Mr. Reynolds was born at Bellefontaine, Ohio on June 28, 1858, and grew up in Dayton, Ohio. In Dayton, he worked for his father at the Reynolds & Reynolds Co., manufacturing notebooks and other school supplies. Later he started his own company, manufacturing paper cartons, and served for 10 years as a member of the school board of that city. While in Ohio, Mr. Reynolds came to know many American leaders, including President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ohio politicos Myron T. Herrick, and Mark Hannah. In 1896 he married Miss Jeanette Lytle in Dayton. She died in 1903 and in 1909 he married Mary V. Williams of Richmond, Indiana. The couple relocated to Richmond and during World War I, Reynolds was prominent in organizing Liberty Loan drives for the war effort.
Upon the death of Teddy Roosevelt on January 6, 1919, Lewis G. Reynolds was made chairman of the Wayne County Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Committee. Reynolds led Indiana’s fundraising plans to honor Roosevelt with monuments in Washington D.C., the national shrine at Oyster Bay, Long Island, restoration of his birthplace at No. 28 West Twenty-Second Street in New York City, and lastly, through an endowment fund, “to perpetuate Colonel Roosevelt’s ideals of courageous Americanism.” The next year, Reynolds traveled to Indianapolis for a speech to the Indiana General Assembly advocating for the construction of the World War Memorial in the capital of the Hoosier state. Thanks in part to his efforts, the resolution was adopted, the memorial built.
After World War I Reynolds led the European Relief Commission, in particular the Wayne County Council headquartered at 1000 Main Street in Richmond. The January 11, 1921 issue of the Richmond Palladium noted, “Lewis G. Reynolds today received the following telegram: “Congratulations on dignified and successful manner in which you are conducting campaign for European relief. The American people are thoroughly aroused to the appealing need of this great mercy call. The need is great. The call urgent. Let mercy impel us to give relief to the starving children of Europe. Herbert Hoover.”
After Osborn H. Oldroyd, the first Lincoln museum curator, sold his collection to the US government in 1926, Reynolds was called to Washington by Col. U.S. Grant, III to take charge of the Oldroyd collection. Ironically, the Reynolds family moved from their house on North Tenth Street in Richmond to their new house on Tenth Street Northwest in Washington D.C.: The House Where Lincoln Died.
A year before Oldroyd’s death, the two old friends were profiled together one final time in the February 12, 1929, Battle Creek Enquirer. “Two men who spend most of their time in the house where Abraham Lincoln died are probably more interested in the anniversary of his birth than anyone else in the country. They are Osborn Oldroyd, aged 87, who has spent 65 years collecting mementos and documents relating to the life of Lincoln, and Lewis Gardner Reynolds, 71, who sat on Lincoln’s knee as a little boy of six…Mr. Reynolds in the last year has shown 20,000 persons from all over the world through the room where Lincoln died.”
So not only was Mr. Reynolds in charge of the world’s largest Lincoln object collection contained within the house where the sixteenth president died, but he could now also entertain visitors with the story of how he, as a six-year-old child, once sat upon Abraham Lincoln’s knee in the White House. In 1929, while the Nation celebrated the 120th anniversary of the Great Emancipator’s birth, Mr. Reynolds recalled that meeting to a local Washington D.C. newspaper reporter. Although not positive about the exact date, Mr. Reynolds said he felt reasonably sure that it was June 28, 1864, his sixth birthday, when the memorable event occurred.
“Father, (Lucius Delmar Reynolds 1835-1913), a captain of one of the companies of the Treasury Guards, was to have a conference with his Commander-in-Chief, and I accompanied him,” Mr. Reynolds said. “While they were discussing the matter of the conference, which lasted nearly an hour, the President picked me up, set me on his knee, and I can feel yet the gentle stroke of that big firm hand as he stroked my head, like the halo of a great benediction. I almost remember his voice. Toward the end of the conference Mr. Lincoln carried me to one of the large windows overlooking the Potomac River, rested me on the deep window seat and stood there with one arm about me while pointing out to the captain some points of vantage he wished him to be familiar with…I saw President Lincoln scores of times,” Mr. Reynolds says, “as father’s duties took him frequently to the Executive Mansion, and he often took me with him. But I recall being actually on Lincoln’s lap and in his arms but once.”
In 1928 Reynolds authored a leaflet titled: “A Wonderful Hour with Abraham Lincoln” which he handed out to friends and special guests visiting the museum. While the leaflet ostensibly tells the story of his encounter with Lincoln, it also offers more details. “The very earliest recollection I have of anything is intimately connected with the Civil War…We removed to Washington and resided there from 1862 to 1866. Father was chief of one of the many bureaus of the treasury department. All the clerks and higher officials of the department were organized into military companies, known collectively as “The Treasury Guards.” They were intensely drilled by officers of the regular army, and as well-equipped as the soldiers in the field, except that they were not uniformed. They represented a potential army of nearly 2,000 men. Their military duties were to be, in case of an emergency, to protect the Treasury Department and the Executive Mansion, nearby. Father was made captain of one of these companies, and to his command was assigned the protection of the White House, and the President. Upon that fact rests my story.”
The Reynolds leaflet further reveals,”Father and mother were at Ford’s Theatre the night of the assassination, and although it was late when they returned home, the general excitement of the night had reached our neighborhood. The newsboys shrill cries of “Extra! Extra! President Lincoln Shot” had awakened everybody in the boarding house. I, too, was awake. Young as I was, I realized what dreadful thing had happened, and I lay wide-eyed in my little trundle bed while father and mother related to the others their personal story of the tragedy. Father, accompanied by several of the men guests, went back to the scene and did not return until after the fateful hour of 7:22 the next morning. I remember as clearly as though it were of yesterday, wearing a wide band of black around the sleeve of my bright plaid jacket, and, carried in father’s arms, of passing the somber catafalque in the rotunda of the Capitol, which inclosed (sic) all that was mortal of the beloved Lincoln. A few weeks later I witnessed the Grand Review of the Army – that wonderful spectacle of the returning boys in blue – which took several days in its passing.”
On February 5, 1931, a story and photo of Lewis G. Reynolds appeared in newspapers all around the world. Mr. Reynolds was pictured standing on the spot where Lincoln died and speaking into a CBS radio microphone. The article details the radio address commemorating Lincoln’s upcoming birthday titled, “A World Tour of the Lincoln Museum”. It read in part, “In telling of the Lincoln Museum and the relics it contains, Reynolds said no story of it would be complete without reference to Col. O.H. Oldroyd to whom the world is indebted for the collection. ‘A monument should be erected to that man,’ he declared.”
Mr. Reynolds supervised the removal of the Oldroyd collection out of the House Where Lincoln Died and into Ford’s Theatre across the street. It began on December 8, 1931, and by New Year’s Day of 1932, Oldroyd’s collection had been fully moved into the newly repurposed Ford’s Theatre. The Oldroyd collection officially opened in its new location at 2:00 P.M. on February 12, 1932. In an article for the Washington Sunday Star magazine on February 12, 1933, Reynolds states, “Twenty-five thousand one hundred and eighty-one persons have visited the Lincoln house since it was open to the public and the number will increase from month to month as the rehabilitation of the shrine becomes more widely known.”
Mr. Reynolds continued in charge of the Lincoln Memorial collection until 1936 when he retired after suffering a stroke. He returned to his home at 39 North Tenth Street in Richmond to convalesce but never worked again. Custodian Reynolds met a sad and untimely end. On August 21, 1940, police and fire were called to the Reynolds home at 39 North Tenth Street where, upon entry, Reynolds was found seated in an invalid’s chair seriously burned. His clothing caught fire when the tip of a lighted match ignited his clothing while his nurse, Mrs. Anna Farlowe, was in the kitchen preparing his evening meal. Investigators believed the accident took place while Reynolds was trying to light his pipe. His wife Mary, who heard his screams for help, rushed to his aid, and with Mrs. Farlowe, succeeded in putting out the fire with blankets. Mr. Reynolds was taken to a nearby hospital by ambulance and both women were treated for severe burns on their hands. Lewis G. Reynolds died in Reid Memorial Hospital in Richmond; He was 82 years old. Mr. Reynolds was survived by his widow, Mary V. Reynolds; and two daughters. Mrs. Horace Huffman. Dayton, Ohio, Mrs. John W. Clements, of Richmond; a stepson, Edward B. Williams, of Richmond; 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Two decades later, in 1960, the Richmond Palladium-Item newspaper profiled the widow of the former curator, offering new insight. The article is titled: “Local Woman Conducted Tours In House Where Lincoln Died.” It reveals, “Mrs. Reynolds and her husband lived on the second floor of the house at 516 Tenth Street, Washington, DC, at the time Mr. Reynolds was curator of the Oldroyd Lincoln Memorial collection. This was from 1928 through 1936. “I never heard anyone ask Mr. Reynolds a question about Mr. Lincoln he could not answer,” Mrs. Reynolds recalls. Her husband acquired the job as curator when he heard Oldroyd wanted to retire… “I have had visitors say to me doesn’t it give you a creepy feeling?” (sleeping in the house where Lincoln died.) Her answer was always “No.” To the reporter, she said, “I never had a creepy feeling. When I thought about it, it was just a feeling of awe and reverence.” Mr. Reynolds described the collection via radio from the Petersen house several times.“
Finally, the article makes note of the widow Reynolds’s role at the House Where Lincoln Died. “Mrs. Reynolds read the Lincoln Library in the Oldroyd collection. In her study of history and Lincoln material, she qualified herself to talk with visitors on Lincolniana. “I met most interesting people,” Mrs. Reynolds said, “I often took them through the rooms…even the people from the South were pleasant. It was a wonderful experience.”
Lewis Gardner Reynolds accomplished more in his 82 years than most could ever dream of. When he died in 1940, Abraham Lincoln had transcended into secular sainthood and Reynolds was the last tangible connection to the mortal Lincoln. Not only was Lewis Gardner Reynolds the last to encounter the living Lincoln, the Reynolds family (following the Petersons, the Schades, and the Oldroyds) were the last to reside in the House Where Lincoln Died. And of course, he was a Hoosier.
Most Americans remember President William McKinley solely for the way he died. His image a milquetoast chief executive from the age of American Imperialism who was at the helm for the dawn of the 20th century. McKinley’s ordinary appearance belied the fact that he was the last president to have served in the American Civil War and the only one to have started the war as an enlisted soldier. It is long forgotten that McKinley led the nation to victory in the Spanish-American War, protected American industry by raising tariffs, and kept the nation on the gold standard by rejecting free silver. Most notably, his assassination at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York unleashed the central figure who would come to personify the new century; his Vice-President Teddy Roosevelt.
McKinley’s favorite flower was a red carnation. He displayed his affection by wearing one of the bright red florets in his lapel every day. The carnation boutonnière soon became McKinley’s personal trademark. As President, bud vases filled with red carnations were conspicuously placed around the White House (known as the “Executive Mansion” back then). Whenever a guest visited the President, McKinley’s custom was to remove the carnation from his lapel and present it to the star-struck visitor. For men, he would often place the souvenir blossom into the lapel himself and suggest that it be given to an absent wife, mother, or child. Afterward, he would replace his boutonnière with another from a nearby vase and repeat the transfer again and again for the rest of the day. McKinley was superstitious about these carnations, believing that they brought good luck to both him and his recipient.
One account alleges that McKinley’s “Genus Dianthus” custom began early in his presidency when an aide brought his two sons to the White House to meet the President. McKinley, who loved children dearly, presented his carnation to the older boy. Seeing the disappointment in the younger boy’s face, the President deftly retrieved a replacement carnation and pinned it on his own lapel. Here the flower remained for a few moments before he removed it and gave to the younger child, explaining “this way you both can have a carnation worn by the President.”
However, McKinley’s ubiquitous floral tradition can be traced to the election of 1876, when he was running for a seat in Congress. His opponent, Dr. Levi Lamborn, of Alliance, Ohio, was an accomplished amateur horticulturist famed for developing a strain of vivid scarlet carnations he dubbed “Lamborn Red.” Dr. Lamborn presented McKinley with a “Lamborn Red” boutonniere before their debates. After he won the election, McKinley viewed the red carnation as a good luck charm. He wore one on his lapel regularly and soon began his custom of presenting them to visitors. He wore one during his fourteen years in Congress, his two gubernatorial wins and both 1896 and 1900 presidential campaigns.
After his second inauguration on March 4, 1901, William and Ida McKinley departed on a six-week train trip of the country. The McKinleys were to travel through the South to the Southwest, and then up the Pacific coast and back east again, to conclude with a visit to the Buffalo Exposition on June 13, 1901. However, the First Lady fell ill in California, causing her husband to limit his public events and cancel a series of planned speeches. The First family retreated to Washington for a month and then traveled to their Canton, Ohio home for another two months, delaying the Expo trip until September.
As McKinley fell backwards into the arms of his aides, members of the crowd immediately attacked Czolgosz. McKinley said, “Go easy on him, boys.” McKinley urged his aides to break the news gently to Ida, and to call off the mob that had set on Czolgosz, thereby saving his assassin’s life. McKinley was taken to the Exposition aid station, where the doctor was unable to locate the second bullet. Ironically, although a newly developed X-ray machine was displayed at the fair, doctors were reluctant to use it on the President because they did not know what side effects. Worse yet, the operating room at the exposition’s emergency hospital did not have any electric lighting, even though the exteriors of many of the buildings were covered with thousands of light bulbs. Amazingly, doctors used a pan to reflect sunlight onto the operating table as they treated McKinley’s wounds.
McKinley drifted in and out of consciousness all day. By evening, McKinley himself knew he was dying, “It is useless, gentlemen. I think we ought to have prayer.” Relatives and friends gathered around the deathbed. The First Lady sobbed over him, “I want to go, too. I want to go, too.” Her husband replied, “We are all going, we are all going. God’s will be done, not ours” and with final strength put an arm around her. Some reports claimed that he also sang part of his favorite hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee” while others claim that the First Lady sang it softly to him. At 2:15 a.m. on September 14, President McKinley died. Czolgosz was sentenced to death and executed by electric chair on October 29, 1901.
Loyal readers will recognize my affinity for objects and will not be surprised by the query, “What became of that assassination carnation?” In an article for the Massillon, Ohio Daily Independent newspaper on Sept. 7, 1984, Myrtle Ledger Krass, the 12-year-old-girl to whom the President gave his lucky flower moments before he was killed, reported that the McKinley’s carnation was pressed and kept in the family Bible. Myrtle, at the time a well-known painter living in Largo, Florida, explained how, many years later while moving, “The old Bible had been put away for years, when I took it out to wrap it for moving, it just crumbled in my hand. Just fell away to nothing.”
In 1902, Lewis Gardner Reynolds (born in 1858 in Bellefontaine, Ohio) found himself in Buffalo on business on the first anniversary of McKinley’s death. While there he found that the mayor of Buffalo had declared the day a legal holiday. Gardner recalled, “without thinking at the time that I was doing something that would become a national custom, I purchased a pink carnation which I placed in the buttonhole of my coat after tying a small piece of black ribbon on it. As I went through Buffalo I explained to questioners the reason for the flower and the black ribbon. Many of those who questioned me followed my example.” On his return to Ohio, he explained to his friend Senator Mark Hannah what he had done in Buffalo. Later, in Cleveland, Reynolds met with Hannah and Governor Myron T. Herrick. Soon plans were made to celebrate Jan. 29, the anniversary of McKinley’s birth, as “Carnation Day.”
Today, the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus continues observing Red Carnation Day every January 29 by installing a small display honoring the assassinated President. Last year, the Statehouse Museum Shop and on-site restaurant offered special discounts to anyone wearing a red carnation or dressed in scarlet on that day. Yes, the sentimental association of the carnation with McKinley’s memory is due to Lewis Gardner Reynolds.
Although Lincoln was the first to officially recognize the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving, Halloween was just beginning to take root during the Civil War. Some historians credit the Irish for “inventing” Halloween in the United States. Or more specifically, the Irish “little people” with a tendency toward vandalism, and their tradition of “Mischief Night” that spread quickly through rural areas. According to American Heritage magazine (October 2001 / Vol. 52, Issue 7), “On October 31, young men roamed the countryside looking for fun, and on November 1, farmers would arise to find wagons on barn roofs, front gates hanging from trees, and cows in neighbors’ pastures. Any prank having to do with an outhouse was especially hilarious, and some students of Halloween maintain that the spirit went out of the holiday when plumbing moved indoors.”
So it is that the origins of our two most celebrated autumnal holidays trace their American roots directly to our sixteenth President. And no President in American history is more closely associated with ghosts than Abraham Lincoln. However, where did all of these Lincoln ghost stories originate? After all, they had to start somewhere because one thing is for certain, they didn’t come from Abraham Lincoln. Many historians believe that most of those stories (at least the Lincoln ghost stories in the White House) came from a middle-aged freedman born in Anne Arundel County Maryland who worked as a White House “footman” serving nine Presidents from U.S. Grant to Teddy Roosevelt. His duties as footman included service as butler, cook, doorman, light cleaning and maintenance.
Jeremiah would often spin yarns for visiting reporters. Most of these tall tales were pure Americana always designed to bolster the reputation of his employer and their families, but some of Jerry’s best remembered tales were spooky ghost stories. Smith claimed that he saw the ghosts of Presidents Lincoln, Grant, and McKinley, and that they tried to speak to him but only produced a buzzing sound.
One Chicago reporter said this about Smith: “He is a firm believer in ghosts and their appurtenances, and he has a fund of stories about these uncanny things that afford immense entertainment for those around him. But there is one idea that has grown into Jerry’s brain and is now part of it, resisting the effects or ridicule, laughter, argument, or explanation. He firmly believes that the White House is haunted by the spirits of all the departed Presidents, and, furthermore, that his Satanic majesty, the devil, has his abode in the attic. He cannot be persuaded out of the notion, and at intervals he strengthens his position by telling about some new strange noise he has heard or some additional evidence he has secured.”
In Kenneth Silverman’s 1996 Biography “Houdini!!!: The Career of Ehrich Weiss : American Self-Liberator, Europe’s Eclipsing Sensation, World’s Handcuff King & Prison Breaker”, the author relays how Houdini referred to Lincoln as “my hero of heroes.” Houdini claimed to have read every book about Lincoln by the time he was a teenager. In William Kalush’s 2006 biography “The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero”, there is a story of young Houdini attending a seance where the medium produced a message from our 16th President. Houdini, Lincoln expert that he was, then asked a question to Lincoln via the medium and was puzzled when the answer that came back was not correct. This encounter led to Houdini’s early discovery that most Spiritualists were fake.
As he grew older and more financially secure, Houdini began to amass a personal collection of Lincoln memorabilia, particularly letters and autographs of the Great Emancipator. He also collected handwritten letters of every member of the assassin John Wilkes Booths family, several in response to letters sent by Houdini himself. Spending much of his adult life on the road, in hotels and traveling for days on ships and trains, Houdini became a prolific man of letters. One such letter survives that illustrates his desire and devotion to add to his Lincoln collection, despite the constraints of his vagabond lifestyle.
On Feb. 13, 1924, a day after the 115th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, Houdini typed out a letter to Mary Edwards Lincoln Brown, the grand-daughter of Ninian and Elizabeth Edwards, Mary Lincoln’s sister. The letter, written from the dressing room of the State Lake Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, reads: “My dear Mrs. Brown: Enclosed you will find a Spirit Photograph of your renowned ancestor, and although the Theomonistic Society in Washington, D.C. claim that it is a genuine spirit photograph, as I made this one, you have my word for it, that it is only a trick effect. Mrs. Houdini joins me in sending you kindest regards, Sincerely yours, Houdini.”
Furthermore, Houdini also produced ‘fake spirit messages’ from Lincoln during his lectures to debunk spiritualism. Many spiritualists attempted to back up their fake photos and messages by claiming that Abraham Lincoln himself was a devoted spiritualist who had held seances in the White House. As proof, they cited a piece of British sheet music, published while Lincoln was President, which portrayed Honest Abe holding a candle while violins and tambourines flew about his head. The piece of music was called The Dark Séance Polka and the caption below the illustration of the president read “Abraham Lincoln and the Spiritualists”.
Alan E. Hunter 