Lou’s View – June 5, 2014
Our American Cousin
by Lou Bernard
Blow the bugles! Fire the cannons! Pay the fine for violating the noise ordinance! Civil War Week is coming up!
From June 9 to June 14, the Ross Library will again be holding Civil War Week, with guest speakers, re-enactors, and events to commemorate the Civil War. My walking tour, on Friday, June 13, will focus on Civil War sites. And—I’m excited about this—We’re performing a play.
With the help of some volunteers, we’ll be performing “Our American Cousin.” You may know this, if you remember your history class or watch Jeopardy, as the play Abraham Lincoln was watching when he was killed. We’ll be performing selected scenes from it, including the final scene that Lincoln saw. This will begin at six PM on June 10th, on the third floor of the library.
We’ll have the room arranged to mimic Ford’s Theater, and we’ll charge a dollar for the good seats, and seventy-five or fifty cents for other seats—These are authentic prices from 1865. You should come, if for no other reason than to see me play Asa Trenchard.
And maybe take a moment to remember Jerry Daley, as well.
Jeremiah Daley was from the Romola area, born September 19, 1868. The Daleys were descended from Irish immigrants who settled in Centre County and built a fortune doing useful things like agriculture and ironmaking, and less useful things like politics.
John Daley, Jerry’s father, was a Civil War veteran who worked with the Department of the Interior. He married Mary Haines on Christmas, 1867, and soon after that, their son Jerry was born.
Jerry Daley grew up on the farm in Curtin Township, and later also went to work for the government, like his dad. It was about 1889 when he signed on with the War Department as a government clerk in the division of Records and Pensions, a job he held about four years.
And then, the disaster. Lincoln was the best-known victim of Ford’s Theater, but not the only one. It was June 9, 1893.
Jerry and some others had been working in the theater, which was used as government offices at the time. The front part of the building collapsed, killing twenty-two people and injuring sixty-eight others.
John Daley, his father, had been visiting Washington at the time it happened. At first, he was unaware that his son had been in the building when it came down. As the bodies were brought out one at a time, however, he recognized one of the bodies that was carried into the parking lot as his son, Jerry.
John immediately sent a telegraph to a friend in Howard, R.P. Long. He asked Long to drop by the farm and break the news gently to Mary and the other children. Then he began making arrangements to bring Jerry home.
Some of the victims of the collapse were buried in Arlington. Jerry’s body was shipped home by train, passing through Lock Haven on the way.
He was buried in the Romola Christian Cemetery, near his home in Centre County. His obituary in the Clinton Democrat listed him as “One of the brightest and most exemplary young men to be found anywhere.”
Ford Theater, after the disaster, was largely unused; there were some people who believed it to be cursed. There was, it must be said, some logic behind that line of thnking. It went through periods where it was a simple warehouse, and periods when it was completely empty. Finally, through a public campaign, it reopened on January 30, 1968 – almost a hundred years exactly after Jerry Daley had been born.
You may or may not ever go to visit the real Ford’s Theater. But you can come to our replica on Tuesday night, purchase a ticket at authentic prices, and see the reenactment of the play. It’ll be great—No matter how badly I screw up, it’s going to go better than the one Lincoln attended. That’s a promise.
