The last surviving witness of Lincoln’s assassination was a contestant on a celebrity game show
Samuel J. Seymour was present at Ford's Theatre the night — April 14, 1865 — that President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Seymour ended up being the longest survivor witness of this tragically historic moment, living long enough to be interviewed on television. On on February 9, 1956, he appeared on an episode of the CBS show I've Got a Secret at the age of 95 — Seymour incorrectly states he is 96, but when you're that old, you're allowed to say whatever you want — in which celebrity panelists try to determine each contestant's secret by asking a series of "yes-or-no" questions.
The panelists — Bill Cullen, Jayne Meadows, Henry Morgan, and Lucille Ball — figure out Seymour's secret without much difficulty, allowing host Garry Moore to summarize Seymour's memory of that fateful evening. Moore explains that, at the age of five, Seymour did not understand that the president was shot, and therefore was only concerned about the well-being of the man who fell from the balcony. Seymour died shortly after on April 12 of that same year. Watch the video below.
