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On April 26, 1865, the death of Abraham Lincoln was avenged due to the actions of Sgt. Boston Corbett of the 16th NY Cavalry. John Wilkes Booth, surrounded inside of Richard Garrett's tobacco barn in Caroline County, Virginia, refused to give himself up. Even as the bard was set on fire, Booth made his way towards the door intent on shooting his way out. Sgt. Corbett, armed with his revolver, sighted Booth between two slats in the barn and fired. The bullet struck Booth in the back of the neck paralyzing him. He was pulled from the barn and died a few hours later on the porch of the Garrett's farmhouse.
For his act, Boston Corbett became a national hero and celebrity. Yet, despite the reward money he received, in a few years, Corbett was in financial difficulty especially after a national financial collapse in 1873. In 1878, he decided to go west and accept a plot of 80 acres being offered to homesteaders in Kansas. He took up residence in Cloud County, Kansas near Concordia.
Because lumber was scarce in the prairie land, Corbett constructed a dugout home in the side of hill. For about nine years, Corbett lived in his dugout home trying his hand as a farmer and homesteader, with little success. Eventually, Corbett was offered the position as an assistant doorkeeper at the Kansas House of Representatives which he took, leaving his homestead behind.
In 2015, I drove to Cloud County, Kansas and visited the site of Boston Corbett's dugout. While little remains at the site of the former dugout itself aside from the hill, I managed to retrieve two large rocks from the area where the entrance to the dugout would have been. From a drawing of Corbett's dugout held by the Kansas Historical Society (pictured below), we know that Corbett used large rocks for his front wall. It's possible that the rock up for auction was used in Corbett's dugout. At the very least, it was recovered on the site where his dugout once stood.
The rock up for auction is large, measuring approximately 10.5" x 4" x 3". On the side of the rock is written the words "Boston Corbett's" in sharpie which I wrote in 2015 after retrieving it. See pictures below for details.
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