the season on 12 May; the highlight of this play was the creation of an ocean island on stage in a scene which culminated with the hero diving into the ocean to save the colleen bawn Eily O'Connor. (Betting on the play's success, Boucicault took The Colleen Bawn to London, where it opened on 10 September 1860 and ran for 230 performances, becoming the first long run in the history of English theater.) In November 1860, Keene premiered the musical The Seven Sisters, which featured extravagant sets and ran for 253 performances, an astonishing total for the time. Assassination of Abraham Lincoln In 1858, Our American Cousin debuted in Laura Keene's Theater. On the night of 14 April 1865, Keene's company, which primarily included John Dyott and Harry Hawk, were performing Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. In attendance that night were President Abraham Lincoln and his wife First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Actor John Wilkes Booth fatally shot President Lincoln while Lincoln watched the play from the presidential box; Booth then fled the theatre. Amid the confusion, Keene made her way to the presidential box where Lincoln lay dying and cradled the mortally wounded President's head in her lap. President Lincoln's fatal head wound bled on her dress, staining her cuff. The cuff was later donated to the National Museum of American History. Later years and death By 1863, Keene was forced to give up managing her own theatre due to poor health. Keene continued as manager and star of a company which toured the United States for most of the next ten years. She also served as manager of the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, from 20 September 1869, through 25 March 1870. Her final performance was on 4 July 1873, while touring in northern Pennsylvania. Keene's second husband, John Lutz, died on 18 April 1869. On 4 November 1873, Keene died of tuberculosis at the age of 47 at Montclair, New Jersey. She is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Footnotes Sources Henneke, Ben Graf, Laura Keene: a Biography. (Tulsa, Okla.: Council Oak Books, 1990.) . (IBDB) Jefferson, Joseph The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson (New York: The Century Co., 1889 and 1890) Chapter 7 (p. 183). Online at HathiTrust. Leale, Charles Augustus. Lincoln's Last Hours (Address), 1909. Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Vol. 3, pp. 261–85 passim Vernanne, Bryan. Laura Keene: A