William J. Ferguson

Baltimore native William J. Ferguson was primarily a stage actor, making less than twenty films. But he does hold an interesting place in American history. Born twenty years before the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Ferguson worked as a printer's devil at the Baltimore Clipper newspaper at the outbreak of the Civil War. After leaving the paper, he took a job as a call boy at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. On the night of April 14, 1865, "Our American Cousin" was being presented at the theatre, with President Lincoln in attendance. When an actor failed to report for the performance, Ferguson was pressed into service to do a short scene. He witnessed John Wilkes Booth shoot the President, and later wrote a short book entitled "I Saw Booth Shoot Lincoln." Ferguson always claimed that Booth never uttered the phrase "sic semper tyrannis." However, Ferguson's account did have slight variations over the years, so one should take his stories with a grain of salt. Shortly before retirement, he went to Los Angeles to appear in the 1922 film The Yosemite Trail (1922). He suffered a hip injury which eventually forced him into retirement in 1924. In 1930, he moved to Pikesville, Maryland, to live with his nephew. He was working on his memoirs, entitled "Sixty Years on the New York Stage," when he died on May 3, 1930. At his passing, he was the last surviving cast member of the company who had witnessed Lincoln's assassination.