Interesting story on Lincoln, boots, feet hurting

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A step back in time with Lincoln boots

An artisan gets a rare chance to examine the famous shoes and discovers new

details. 'Amazing,' he says.

By E. Ruane May 14, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- The flashlight beam lighted up the dark interior of

Abraham Lincoln's left boot as if the inside of a tomb, and there at the bottom

was the smooth and shiny indentation made by the martyred president's heel.

The odor of fine leather still clung to the top of the boot, where the white

cloth pull straps were sewn. When the light hit a maroon section of the hide,

boot maker Carnacchi whispered, " Aha. There's your original

color. "

A small group of National Park Service curators and conservators craned to peer

inside -- and, in a way, back in time to the night in 1865 when Lincoln pulled

on his boots and clomped to the carriage that took him to Ford's Theatre.

" Whew, " Carnacchi said. " Amazing. "

It was a solemn moment this week when Carnacchi, along with park service museum

curator Gloria Swift and other park service experts, probed the interior and

exterior of the hallowed items labeled " Boots, Lincoln's " on a typed 1966

catalog card.

The square-toed, shin-high boots, wrinkled and darkened, lay like relics on

white acid-free paper atop an examining table in Room 22 of the park service's

Museum Resource Center in suburban Landover, Md.

And they were handled with reverence by cotton-gloved experts, aware that these

were probably the boots that were taken from Lincoln's feet when surgeons

stripped off his clothes in the room where he died.

Lincoln's are among the nation's most famous surviving boots, along with those

of Jefferson and E. Lee, said D.A. Saguto, master boot and shoe

maker at the Colonial burg Foundation.

Boots can speak clearly of their owner, he said. " No other garment that we wear

retains such an imprint of the person who wore it, " Saguto said. As with

Lincoln's, a footprint is often left inside the sole, he said.

Lincoln is known to have had problems with his feet, said Blaine Houmes, a

physician and Lincoln expert from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. " He frequently

complained, " Houmes said, although it's unclear what the problem was. One

account says his feet were frostbitten when he was a young man. He might also

have had corns or bunions, Houmes said.

Carnacchi, 46, of California, asked the park service this year -- the

bicentennial of Lincoln's birth -- for permission to examine and report on

Lincoln's boots. The agency, which has custody of the clothing Lincoln wore the

night he was assassinated, agreed.

It was the first time the boots had been examined in detail in almost 20 years,

the park service said, and the first time in recent memory that they have been

scrutinized by a professional boot maker.

Carnacchi, sporting a long ponytail and a pair of elegant black boots, arrived

at the resource center Monday with a bag filled with instruments. He went back

Wednesday for more work.

He said portions of the boot top seem to be made of fine book-binding-quality

Moroccan goatskin. He said the boots seemed more like a size 12 1/2 than the 14

stated on the catalog card. And he discovered decorative cross-hatching on the

heel that had not been noticed.

Carnacchi saw through the magnifying glass that sections of the upper portions

of the boots are embossed with a minute geometric pattern. Inside, he found more

evidence of the original maroon color that had been worn away on the outside.

The boots were originally black and maroon.

Carnacchi also identified a set of 14 numbers that appear on a tracing of

Lincoln's feet as a standard set of boot maker's fitting measurements, said to

have been made in the White House by Kahler in 1864. It is unclear whether

the Ford's Theatre boots were made from the tracing.

The 15-inch-tall boots, which were the apex of gentlemen's fashion, are also

strikingly lightweight. But they might not have been comfortable. There are a

crease along one side of the left boot and indications near the toe that suggest

an imperfect fit, Carnacchi said. " This boot was a little short on him. "

The park service says it acquired the boots in 1947 from a Massachusetts woman

whose grandfather, Hatch, had been given them by . Lincoln

died in 's rented boardinghouse room, and historians think used the

boots as collateral for a personal loan from Hatch.

Carnacchi noticed six layers in the heel stack that were reinforced with

hobnails. When Lincoln walked on a wooden floor, the sound would have been

commanding.

" You would have known when the president walked in the room, " he said.

Ruane writes for the Washington Post.