Lincoln's Funeral Car Mystery

Recently, a mystery was solved. The question was simple; finding the answer was hard. The year 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's death, so in his honor, a replica of the funeral railcar is being constructed and taken along the original route that Lincoln's funeral car made in 1865. The original trip lasted two weeks, and so will this one. In celebrating and honoring the President, there was one detail which came up that needed to be answered. The railcar was sold after the procession at an auction. It went through a number of owners before it was destroyed by a fire in 1911. Since the railcar doesn't exist anymore, and the only photographs of it are not in color, what color was it?

Photograph of Lincoln's funeral car

In steps Wayne Wesolowski, chemist at University of Arizona at Tuscon, who was brought on to solve the mystery. Wesolowski was a natural choice. While teaching in Chicago, he directed the Lincoln Train Project, where the funeral procession was the main focus. He completed a 15-foot scale model of the railcar for the project in 1995.

Wesolowski's first step was to pour through historical records such as newspapers and other written materials. This proved inconclusive because most said nothing of the color, and those that did tended to be contradictory. One article mentioned it was a claret or red wine color, and another mentioned chocolate brown. Big difference? Well, remember that there were no chocolate bars at the time, and the only real chocolate was Dutch chocolate, which was a reddish brown. This would mean that most likely it was a dark reddish color, but that wasn't enough.

Through his research, he found a man in Minnesota who had a window frame piece from the original railcar. There was some paint still on the frame, although not much. He was able to take microscopic samples of the paint and laid them on color samples to match them up. Since the samples were microscopic, it was possible to see the dots of the colors mixed which your eye then tells you of the overall color. Under the microscope, it appears as a patchwork or dots. Matching is simple: if the frame sample is visible on top of the color sample, then it is not correct; if it disappears, then it matches. After much trial and error, he found the right color.

What was the verdict? A dark maroon color. When he was interviewed, he noted that his 1995 model was too red. So when we see the replica railcar in 2015, it will be the same color as the original, and a celebration of the legacy of one of our nation's greatest presidents can be truly honored accurately.