Lucy Lambert Hale

Lucy Lambert Hale (January 1, 1841 – October 15, 1915) was the daughter of U.S. Senator John Parker Hale of New Hampshire, and was a noted Washington, D.C., society belle. She attracted many admirers including Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Robert Todd Lincoln; and stage actor and presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth, to whom she was secretly engaged. Lucy's photograph was found in Booth's pocket after Sergeant Boston Corbett mortally wounded Booth 12 days after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

Hale later married William E. Chandler, a future United States Senator and United States Secretary of the Navy. She was described as "pretty, precocious, sweet and good". or 1865, she received an anonymous note from John Wilkes Booth, a wildly popular stage actor and notorious ladies man, in which he wrote:

My dear Miss Hale, were it not for the License with a time-honored observance of this day allows, I had not written you this poor note. ... You resemble in a most remarkable degree a lady, very dear to me, now dead and your close resemblance to her surprised me the first time I saw you. This must be my apology for any apparent rudeness noticeable. To see you has indeed afforded me a melancholy pleasure, if you can conceive of such, and should we never meet nor I see you again believe me, I shall always associate you in my memory, with her, who was very beautiful, and whose face, like your own I trust, was a faithful index of gentleness and amiability. With a Thousand kind wishes for your future happiness I am, to you,A Stranger. Hale's father was an outspoken abolitionist. Hale and Booth had begun to quarrel during this time, according to Booth's sister Asia who later reported that Booth had become enraged when he saw Hale dancing with the President's son and her erstwhile admirer, Robert Todd Lincoln, one evening at the National Hotel.

When Booth shot and mortally wounded President Lincoln that night at Ford's Theatre, their romance came to an abrupt end. She was devastated by the news, and found it impossible to believe her fiancé had been the assassin. A few evenings before the assassination, Booth had taken her to a performance at Ford's. She was not called by the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, to testify at the trial of Booth's co-conspirators.

Marriage and later life In the wake of the assassination, Hale accompanied her parents to Spain, where her father took up his post as United States Ambassador to Spain. She remained in Europe for five years, during which time she received and refused many offers of marriage from titled aristocrats. She immersed herself in politics at her husband's side and was a successful hostess at the many social functions Chandler held in Washington.

Death Hale died on October 15, 1915, and is buried at Pine Hill Cemetery in her hometown of Dover, New Hampshire.

Hale's step-grandson, Theodore E. Chandler, later became a highly decorated Navy Admiral during World War II. He was injured when kamikazes attacked his ship in the Pacific theatre on January 6, 1945. He died the following day.

Media portrayals Lucy Lambert Hale appeared as a character in the 1998 television film The Day Lincoln Was Shot. She was portrayed by American actress Jean Louisa Kelly, with Rob Morrow in the role of John Wilkes Booth.