Lincoln funeral train mystery solved

Anne Ryman, The Arizona Republic | USATODAY

PHOENIX -- The man from Minnesota had something that model train enthusiast Wayne Wesolowski deeply desired.

The Minnesota man inherited a window frame from the historic train car that carried President Abraham Lincoln's body back to his hometown in Springfield, Ill., after the 1865 assassination.

Wesolowski, who now teaches chemistry at the University of Arizona, needed the frame to solve a historical mystery. Lincoln scholars were uncertain of the funeral car's precise color. Fire destroyed the car in the early 1900s. No color photographs exist. Eyewitness accounts in newspapers were unreliable; the car was variously described as chocolate brown or claret red.

Wesolowski had been allowed to photograph and even hold the window frame. But the man refused to lend it for analysis. Wesolowski kept in touch with the man, on and off, for a decade.

As time passed, solving the mystery took on an urgency. With the 150th anniversary of the president's death approaching in 2015, a historical group planned to create a replica of the funeral train. The group asked Wesolowski to be a consultant.

Wesolowski didn't want to guess on something as important as color.

He decided to make one more appeal — for the sake of history.

Wesolowski is a walking encyclopedia on the Lincoln train. He was a chemistry professor at Benedictine University near Chicago in the 1990s when the university's president called him into his office. The president had a keen interest in Lincoln. He wanted Wesolowski to create a traveling exhibit of the funeral train. Within days, he had a $100,000 grant from the Chicago Tribune.

Nowhere is Lincoln's legend greater than in his home state of Illinois. Monuments and memorabilia abound. Lincoln's funeral train holds a special significance. Lincoln scholars call the presidential car the equivalent to Air Force One. The 16th president never used the railroad car during his lifetime, though. Historians estimate that millions of Americans turned out to see the car carrying the president's body as it made the 12-day trip over 1,600 miles from Washington, D.C.

It had a profound effect on the Northern and border states, according to William C. Harris, an emeritus history professor at North Carolina State University who has written several books on Lincoln. The train produced a unity and appreciation of Lincoln's leadership and character that had not existed earlier. Even critics of Lincoln expressed sorrow at his death, he said.

As part of the traveling train exhibit, Wesolowski finished a 15-foot miniature of Lincoln's funeral train in 1995. He had to guess at the color, though, based on written descriptions. He picked a reddish maroon.

To get the precise color, he needed to find a paint sample of the car's exterior. One evening, a few years later, he mentioned his interest in the Lincoln train to his dining companions at a charity dinner.

"We're from Minnesota," someone said. "There's someone there with Lincoln train stuff."

They gave him a name. Wesolowski later met up with the man, whose identity he is protecting. The man had inherited the car window from a relative. The window had been removed after 1877 but before fire destroyed the car in 1911.

The man refused to let the window out of his sight. Ever hopeful, Wesolowski stayed in touch. He sent the man the latest research he found on the funeral train.

Six months ago, Wesolowski decided to try again. He called the man, explained the car replica project and the historical importance of getting the paint color correct. This time, he sweetened the offer. He would trade another Lincoln artifact in his possession: A piece of black bunting that draped the funeral car.

"Would you be willing to loan a piece of the (window) trim?" Wesolowski asked.

"Sure," the man said.

Wesolowski had another question. And it was an important one. Could he scrape the trim to get a paint sample?

The man agreed.

Wesolowski was afraid to open the box when it arrived in early March. Inside, a sample of the window trim the size of a pencil rested in foam. After all these years, he finally had what he needed.

He enlisted the help of three labs on the University of Arizona campus, including the Arizona State Museum, where conservator Nancy Odegaard has experience in a color-matching procedure known as the Munsell Color System.

"Hi Nancy," he wrote in an email. "Haven't talked in a while but I'm looking for a favor."

The two gathered in the museum's lab on March 27. Hunched over a microscope and using lamps to replicate daylight, Odegaard sprinkled specs of paint chips against the paint samples. After about an hour and a half of comparing, she had the answer.

"Can you see them?" Odegaard asked as the paint chips disappeared against the sample.

"Those are really hard to see now," Wesolowski said.

"That means they match!" Odegaard said.

The color is a deep maroon —16 parts black and four parts red.

Wesolowski had closure. There was no more guessing.

Mystery solved.

----

About the Lincoln funeral train

The Arizona Republic

The funeral car was originally Abraham Lincoln's presidential railroad car. But he never rode in the car until after his death in 1865. Lincoln's widow, Mary, wanted the president's body sent straight to Chicago for burial but later agreed to having a train carry Lincoln's coffin along portions of what had been his inaugural train route in 1861.

The funeral car carried the president and the coffin of his son, Willie, who died in 1862. The train traveled about 1,600 miles from Washington, D.C., to the president's hometown of Springfield, Ill. Millions of mourners turned out in cold, rainy weather. Ten funerals were planned along the way.

The car was later sold to the Union Pacific Railroad for $6,850 and then to private owners. One of the owners put the car on exhibit. A Minnesota prairie fire destroyed the car while it was in storage on March 18, 1911.

Sources: The Lincoln Funeral Train by Scott D. Trostel, Roger Norton Abraham Lincoln Research Site