The Fathers and Saviors of Our Country: A Presidential Sale

One page, 4to (279 x 216 mm), written on the verso of Continental Hotel [San Francisco] stationery, very light toning.

In full: "I first met John 'Wilkes Boothe' [sic] in Detroit Mich during the season 1862. - and again in Indiana in early fall of 1863. We became a little intimate in our friendship for each other. We didn't meet again, until about four weeks before the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, in front of the Fremont Hotel on that day. It was some where near ten oclock in the morning -and I - in company with two ladies of the company, that I was playing with, at the old Howard Athenaewn on Howard Street, Boston. And John Wilkes Boothe was standing in front of the Fremont Hotel, talking to Mr Wm Pitcher.- I think still alive - who was connected with the Hotel- and whom I knew. John and I had a hurried deal - in which I explained to him, that I was hurrying to a rehearsal - and he made me promise that I would call on him, as soon as I was free, he gave me the number of his room at the Parker House and asked me to come right up. and not wait to be convinced for that was long before telephones - when my rehearsal was over - late in the afternoon - I hurried to my friends room - I knocked and walked in, without an answer as I did so - my friend was sitting at a table in the center of the room, in a deep study of a revolver on the table before him - he started up and said - 'Hello! Mack- I've been waiting for you' - he then picked the revolver up, and put it into one of the small bureau drawers - We then chatted about our mutual friends, and what had happened - [end of manuscript]."

McKee Rankin began his American theatrical career in Rochester, New York, in 1861, and would go on to appear in numerous productions, including The Stranger, Mosquito, and The Two Orphans alongside Kitty Blanchard, who appeared in a July 1864 engagement in Louisville, Kentucky; she and McKee Rankin would marry in 1869. Two of Rankin's daughters would later marry into the prominent acting families of Drew and Barrymore.

The present manuscript is partial and contains no information on Booth's wardrobe; however, the wardrobe referred to was likely salvaged from a vessel that departed Quebec, Montreal, in February 1865 with three trunks of Booth's theatrical costumes aboard and was sunk by a Union gunboat off the coast of Virginia a few days later. Much of Booth's wardrobe was returned to his brother, Edwin, who, in 1873, with the assistance of his personal attendant, burned their contents in the basement of the new Booth's Theatre in New York City.