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The Brooks Brothers advertisement in the Jan. 21 New York Times didn't tell the whole story about one of the nation's most historic garments.

The ad pointed out that the New York clothier presented a black overcoat to Abraham Lincoln as a gift to wear to his second inauguration in March 1865 .

The ad didn't mention that Lincoln also wore the coat that night six weeks later when John Wilkes Booth shot and killed him during a visit to Ford's Theatre .

Or that Mary Todd Lincoln gave the blood-stained garment, plus the suit, vest and tie her husband wore that April 14 night to a White House doorkeeper named Alphonse Donn .

Or that Donn's granddaughter, Dorothy Donn Smith , inherited the clothes and kept them in a safe-deposit box in a downtown Greensboro bank after she moved here in the 1950s .

Or that she offered the clothes to the Greensboro Historical Museum for what officials there described as "a large sum of cash money."

Or that she finally sold the items to Ford's Theatre in 1968 for $25,000 .

"If anybody ever asks me what was the most fascinating or interesting or unusual case I ever handled," said Smith's attorney, William T. Rightsell Jr. , "I am sure this will qualify on all three."

The top coat will go back on display at the theater's Lincoln Museum Feb. 12 , in time for the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth. The theater has been closed for about 18 months for a $40 million renovation.

A spokesman for the National Park Service , which operates the theater, called the clothing "a gem" of the museum's collection.

But it took the theater more than 100 years to obtain the garments and put them on public display.

Generations care for suit

Shortly after the assassination, Donn asked Mrs. Lincoln for something that had belonged to her husband. She gave him the assassination garments, including his silk hat and a fur collar piece.

"For your devoted attention to President Lincoln, I gave you those clothes," Mrs. Lincoln wrote later in a letter to Donn. " ... Retain them always, in memory of the best and noblest man that ever lived."

Donn kept the clothes, even turning down an offer of $20,000 from the showman P.T. Barnum . But he gave the hat and fur collar to friends.

Over the years, Donn apparently clipped swatches out of the sleeve of the overcoat, which had been stained by blood, and gave them to friends. On at least one occasion, visitors to his home cut away samples without his permission.

Over the years, the pieces of cloth have become collectors' items. One recently sold in Texas for more than $3,800 .

When Donn died in 1886 , he left the clothes to his son Frank , who passed them on to his widow, Katherine , who gave them to her daughter, Dorothy, in the late 1920s .

Local attorney helps

Almost from the beginning, Dorothy Donn Smith wanted to find a permanent home for the clothing. She even asked Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg for suggestions about possible buyers.

But nothing came of her efforts.

"It is my desire to have them placed in an institution of the proper type, where they will be preserved for years to come," Smith wrote in 1933 .

" ... I am not in a position financially to donate these relics to a historical society or other similar institution."

After Smith's husband died in the mid-1960s , she hired Rightsell to settle his estate. That required Smith, Rightsell, a clerk of court and a bank custodian to view the contents of the Smiths' safe-deposit box in the Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. downtown, the site of the current Center Pointe condo project.

Smith told the group that the box contained the clothes Lincoln wore the night of his assassination.

"We all looked at her like she was a nut," Rightsell recalled. "We could not believe that something as valuable or historically significant as this was not in a museum."

But once Rightsell saw the garments and a stack of authenticating documents, including letters from Mrs. Lincoln, he was convinced.

When Smith asked if Rightsell would help her sell the clothes, he readily agreed. But finding a buyer didn't come quickly. Smith wanted $50,000 for the items.

When Smith showed the clothes to Bill Moore , then the director of the Greensboro Historical Museum, she offered him the chance to try on Lincoln's suit coat. Moore hesitated.

"I felt this was a relic that belonged to the people and I had no right to put it on," said Moore, now retired. "But my curiosity overcame me. I felt like this is as close as I am going to get to the man himself."

As for buying the items, Moore hesitated again.

"I was sort of on the fence," he said. " .... It would have been great for us to own as an icon, but I realized that this was not the place for it."

Brooks Brothers and the Smithsonian Institution had no interest in the garments, the latter because it did not want any additional Lincoln assassination items.

But officials acting on behalf of the U.S. Department of the Interior , which operates Ford's Theatre through the National Park Service , expressed interest.

Buyer surfaces in 1968

In 1968 , Rightsell took the garments to Washington so federal officials could authenticate them. During the visit, he carried the clothes to Ford's Theatre and Petersen's Boarding House , the building across the street where Lincoln died the morning after the shooting.

Rightsell even laid the clothing on the bed where the president's body lay.

"It was kind of a chilling moment," Rightsell said. "This was what he was wearing when he died, and I had a part in bringing them back to Washington."

The Interior Department agreed to take the garments, thanks to a $25,000 gift from the American Trucking Association , and placed them in the theater's museum.

In a 1968 interview with the Washington Star , Smith said the clothing "rests where it truly belongs."

Smith, who died in 1972 , kept a swatch from the great coat for herself. She also gave one to Rightsell.

The thumbnail-sized piece of cloth has spent the last 40-plus years tucked away in his files.

"It was a very novel situation," Rightsell said of his encounter with history. "It has been a case that I will never forget."

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com