A leisurely Look at Michigan’s stories and traditions from yesterday to yesteryear.
John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. As the nation grieved, a hunt for the killer ensued. Baker’s cousin, Lafayette Baker (also from Lansing) headed the Secret Service investigation, with Luther and Everton J. Conger assisting him. Once they picked up Booth’s trail, they set out in pursuit.
In 2007, the Archives of Michigan was awarded a National Historical Publication and Records Commission (NHPRC) Digitizing Historical Records grant. The project, named, “Thank God for Michigan” set the ambitious task of digitizing every government-related Civil War record in the Archives collection (about 100,000 pages).
