$525K flag that covered Abraham Lincoln’s casket finds home — in NYC steakhouse

Known as the Applegate Flag due to its provenance handed down through generations of the descendants of army doctor Lewis Applegate’s family for more than 150 years, the flag was first gifted to the physician from Sen. Edwin D. Morgan — who was one of only six Senate pallbearers who rode with the funeral train, Lisowski said. After exiting the Applegate lineage in 1977 and exchanging hands in two other families, the flag was donated to the Museum of Southern History in Jacksonville, Florida in 1996 — until it was rediscovered “down a dark hallway behind a bookcase” during an inventory check in 2023. The flag joins a swath of Lincoln memorabilia in Keens’ upstairs dining room, including political cartoons; a famous Bixby letter from Lincoln to a Union army widow who lost her five sons in the Civil War; and a stained program that a nearby framed article claims Lincoln was holding at Ford’s Theatre when he was fatally shot by John Wilkes Booth.

Author: Nicole Rosenthal

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