North Fork History: Tales of Lincoln

These are exerpts from an article that appeared in the Peconic Bay Shopper several years ago.

Eva Albertson Horton born in 1855, daughter of Richard Albertson and Mary Hallock in Jamesport married Schuyler Bogart Horton of Greenport in 1877.  They met through a debate amongst local elocution clubs.  Eva, short on stature – she was only 4 feet 10 inches – was tall on community action.   Greatly involved in the temperance movement, she was active in woman’s rights including voting rights; a proponent of reproductive rights education, racial equality and, humane treatment of animals.  A founding member of the literary society and the Woman’s Exchange she also ran a boarding house at her home and sheltered unwed mothers.

Eva had a keen interest in politics and was an ardent member of the Party of Lincoln.   I discovered her lively and firmly held views and observations on the affairs of the world in the yellowed newspaper columns published in the former Riverhead News (that merged with the County Review to become the ) during the 1920’s and ‘30’s.  She wrote a column “Bible Readings”, a discussion of world events called “Our Folks Opinions” and a seniors column named “Old Folks Corner”.  Eva Albertson later incorporated this essay, written in 1905, with strong anti-war material and it appeared as an article in her series “Old Folks Corner” in the Riverhead News in 1933.

----------

In the memorable years of the Civil War, a little country girl drifted to the city of Washington, D.C. to live.  Her father had been called to join the hundreds of men needed by the War Department for the extra clerical work made by the great struggle.

She was a shy little child of ten, with a master passion of affection for her father which included whatever he loved.  As her father was an ardent abolitionist – a “black republican”, as they called men of his pronounced views, then – the child was also a black republican to the core, hating slavery, adoring Lincoln, and entering with passionate sympathy, perhaps unusual in a child, into the exciting events of those days.”

Her father took her to a mammoth reception at the White House:

In her words, “The little girl being a bit undersized was being swept by unseen, when, perhaps, the longing look she sent to him made the tall man stoop and hold the crowd back:

“I want to shake hands with the little girl,” he said in the kindest way; and the little girl’s hand was gripped as heartily as that of the highest lady who passed before him, and she can now feel anew that rush of affection that tingled to her small toes, for the great soul that was so kind and tender and thoughtful of a child.

The little girl went to school on Tenth St., next door to Ford’s Theatre.  When she hung on the window-sill with the other girls during the old-fashioned recess, eating limes and pickles which they bought at the small store across the street, she used to wonder what fascinating things went on behind those brick walls.  Her country “bringing up” had not permitted an intimate acquaintance with the theatre, and that square-looking building enclosed the background of wonderful dreams for the imaginative child.  She has never forgotten the revulsion of feeling that came to her after the dreadful morning of April 15, 1865, when the news flashed over the city that Lincoln had been shot there.  It was as if a black pall enveloped it, and throughout the short time she remained in that school, she never passed it without a shudder.

Those were days when you saw into men’s hearts.  Never a family but had some member in the army.  It cost something to be a patriot, but what patriotism those days brought out!  And what loyalty to the fearless chieftain at the head of affairs!

The little girl remembers how haggard the faces and how blanched the lips of the men she met on the street, when she went to school that morning.  She remembers as though it were but yesterday, the colored mammies breaking out into open wailing at every turn; the city so soon draped in heavy mourning, with the one Smart Aleck daring to illuminate his house, and being almost mobbed by the enraged populace; she remembers the shuddering recoil of her father when she came breathlessly in from the corner grocery in the early morning and told him the news that was already rending the city.  She remembers how for months afterwards, he could not speak of Lincoln without his being suffused with feeling.  She also remembers how he cherished among his treasures up to the day of his death a tiny square of rough crash toweling which had been part of the bandage about the head of the dying man, because upon that bit of cloth was a drop of precious martyr blood!"