in search of the Lincoln rocker…

Several years ago, I purchased a book. Nothing remarkable about that, bookaholic that I am, nor was the subject of that book, Abraham Lincoln, a newcomer to my personal library. What set that purchase apart was that I acquired all 312 pages (9” X 12”, decidedly fine print!) of Twenty Days: A Narrative in Text and Pictures of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Twenty Days and Nights that followed—The Nation in Mourning, the Long Trip Home to Springfield so that I might own page 43—a picture whose caption reads “Here is the rocking chair in which Lincoln was slumped and senseless when Dr. Leale reached the box.”

I have loved rocking chairs since before memory began. There have been many in my life, but none so remarkable as the justright mahogany Boston rocker under the tree my second Christmas. Except, perhaps, the one I discovered several years ago in the dusty back room of a wicker boutique that also peddled pasttheirprime furnishings… The one that demanded that I learn how to realize its contemporary potential without sacrificing its story, its place in a time before mine.

From the squared nails, the horsehair stuffing, the original floral brocade upholstery preserved under a not-so-long-ago green velvet attempt to modernize, I came to understand that my chair had rocked through many generations before it found its way to me. I dared to breathe the word antique though I, too, had compromised its circa-mid-19th-century authenticity with my eve-of-the-21st-century floral brocade, staple-gun staples, electric sewing machine seaming, hot-glue-gun gluing, polyurethane glossing. Not to mention padding the padding! My rocking chair lent substance and grace to my eclectic surroundings. That was enough.

Until I came across the picture of a Lincoln rocker being auctioned on Ebay… I don’t remember the sequence of it all, one discovery unearthing another. Perhaps it was the caned child’s rocker I bid on there, one of my first and certainly one of my most difficult-to-negotiate Ebay purchases. Today an all-but-the-crest identical chair is listed as Vintage Child’s Caned Lincoln Rocker (vintage meaning that it dates from 1900-1950), with an opening bid almost five times my purchase price.

The staple online furniture glossary definition for a Lincoln rocker is “an upholstered (so how does a caned seat and back qualify?) high back rocker that has an exposed wood frame and padded armrests (not so the caned versions).” But my first question, upon linking that label to the chair in my living room, was not so much about definition as it was about origin. Certainly, Abraham Lincoln did not choose to be shot, nor even to sit, in a rocking chair bearing his name!

From somewhere in memory I knew that Lincoln had indeed chosen to sit in a rocking chair in his box at Ford’s Theater that April evening in 1865. Various accounts (National Park Service, Henry Ford Museum [where this chair is on display today; Ford’s Theater has to make do with a replica]) tell us that the chair, not part of the everyday furnishings of that box, was brought in perhaps to accommodate the President’s physical needs (to stretch his legs? to support his back?) or perhaps just because it matched the other chairs and the sofa brought in for that occasion. The red velvet fabric just below the carved wood crest is stained, not with the President’s blood but with a greasy substance used to dress men’s hair in those days. Accounts tell us that, for 55 years, this rocker, Lincoln’s rocker, gathered dust in a storage room somewhere in the depths of the Smithsonian. In 1929, after being reclaimed by the widow of its original owner (the Ford of Ford’s Theater), it brought $2,400 at a New York auction. Its new owner was the Ford of automobile fame, Henry.

So, if it wasn’t yet a Lincoln rocker that evening in April of 1865, what was it? I was back in home economics class my senior year in high school, learning about Georgian and French Provincial and French Colonial (one had two balconies and I knew I would live in a house with balconies someday). I wanted to name this rocker in my living room, to name the features that made it what it was before it was Lincoln’s rocker. Which is why I needed the pictures. How were our chairs, Lincoln’s and mine, alike? How were they different? What did these likenesses, these differences, mean?

A third chair—a rocking chair which actually belonged to Abraham Lincoln while he lived in Springfield, Illinois (1844-1861)—helped me make sense of the differences. The Springfield chair (image and description courtesy of the University of Illinois Library Collections) has thirteen buttons: Top to bottom, in rows of 1, then 2, then 3, then 2, then 3, then 2. My chair back features only the first four of these rows. A row of three below them would compromise the lumbar support this skillfully crafted 18th century back provides. Simply stated, my Lincoln’s rocker is a lady’s chair. Lincoln would not have been comfortable seated in one proportioned so. The other difference of note is the carving on the crests of these chairs. I have yet to find any two identical, though elaborate leaf, nut, shell, flower, and/or fruit designs are common elements. A third, and subtle difference, is the degree to which the back of each chair balloons. My chair back varies little in width from top to bottom while both chairs where Lincoln sat widen slightly above the upholstered armrests.

Similarities? Upholstered armrests, back, and seat. Exposed wooden (black walnut, mahogany, rosewood) frame. Runners and legs without decoration (his chairs and mine). Noticable “c” curve in the front legs. And the arms, the gondola arms! Lincoln’s Springfield rocker arms sports lotus flower carvings at the end of each curve. The Ford’s Theater rocker’s elaborately scrolled gondola arms are identical—yes, truly identical—to those on the chair in my living room.

Before Lincoln’s rocker was Lincoln’s rocker, it was Rococo or, perhaps, Rococo Revival. The curves are Rococo. The original pastel brocade upholstery of my rocker (but not of Lincoln’s two) is more reminiscent of this period than of the revival era. But elaborately carved crests are characteristic of the Victorian Era’s Rococo Revival (1850s-1870s). On Ebay today there’s a rocker much like Lincoln’s (Ford’s Theater) and mine being auctioned in Falls Church, Virginia. Its Ebay listing? “Rococo Revival walnut horsehair rocking chair”…

Questions linger.

In those days before brand names, before mass production, did the carvings on a given head crest represent a particular craftsman’s work, a particular family or region ? For years I thought the crest on my chair was acanthus leaves. Those on each side of the center may well be. But the leaf in the middle, braced by a large nut (or small fruit?) on each side? More art than science, perhaps. I cannot seem to name them.

I have always thought my chair mahogany—the color but do I know the grain? What about rosewood? What of black walnut?

I wish I knew its story, the story of all those generations rocked gently there and why it came to be in that dusty back room of a wicker boutique so that I could bring it home. But I would like to think that we have begun to weave new stories, this chair and my family now. I would like to think that my Rococo Revival chair will gently rock many of our generations yet to come.

A kinder, gentler fate than that of Ford’s rocker, forever to be known as Lincoln’s…