A frock coat attributed to Abraham Lincoln's assassination was donated to the Chicago Historical Society in 1924. A notarized affidavit accompanying the coat was signed by Charles Forbes, Lincoln's footman:

I was the personal attendant of the late President Lincoln from shortly after his first inauguration up to the time when he fell by the assassin's bullet. Shortly after his death, when Mrs. Lincoln was packing her things preparatory to vacating the White House, she gave me the full suit of clothes which the President wore the night of the assassination together with other personal belongings of my friend and benefactor. I asked her, "What shall I do with them?" She said "do anything you like with them, don't let me see them again!"

Coat attributed to Abraham Lincoln, 1865 (CHS 1924.40).

I accompanied [Lincoln] in the carriage, was with him from the carriage to the box in the theatre, and was in the box when the assassin fired his fatal shot. (FORBES)

No other eyewitness placed Forbes in the presidential box at the time of the assassination. In fact, he may have left his post during the play and crossed paths with John Wilkes Booth at a local saloon where the murderer summoned his courage with a whiskey.

Charles Forbes accompanied Lincoln to Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865, the night the President was assassinated. Many years later he claimed:
"Assassination of President Lincoln in his Private Box at Ford's Theatre," The Terrible Tragedy at Washington. Assassination of President Lincoln, 1865 (ICHi-30946).

Forbes gave the coat to Thomas Pendel, a White House doorman.

Pendel was assigned to the White House as a Metropolitan Police guard in November 1864 and was later promoted to doorman; he kept his post through several subsequent administrations. Pendel poked fun at Forbes in his autobiography Thirty-Six Years in the White House:

On one occasion, President Lincoln, when riding near the Soldiers' Home, said to his footman, named Charles Forbes, who had but recently come from Ireland, "What kind of fruit do you have in Ireland, Charles?" To which Charles replied, "Mr. President, we have a good many kinds of fruit: gooseberries, pears, apples, and the like."The President then asked, "Have you tasted any of our American fruits?" Charles said he had not, and the President told Burke, the coachman, to drive under a persimmon tree by the roadside. Standing up in the open carriage, he pulled off some of the green fruit, giving some of it to Burke and some to Charles, with the advice that the latter try some of it. Charles, taking some of the green fruit in his hand, commenced to eat, when to his astonishment he found that he could hardly open his mouth. Trying his best to spit it out, he yelled, "Mr. President, I am poisoned! I am poisoned!" Mr. Lincoln fairly fell back in his carriage and rolled with laughter. (PENDEL 32)

White House doorkeeper Thomas F. Pendel from his autobiography Thirty-Six Years in the White House, 1902. Courtesy of Northwestern University Library.