A Menorcan in the plot to kill Lincoln

April 14, 1865, 160 years ago, was Good Friday. After a failed kidnapping attempt, John Wilkes Booth decided to assassinate Abraham Lincoln that very night. He would do so when the US president was going with his wife, Mary, to see Tom Taylor's comedy "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington, near the White House. The young, twenty-six-year-old actor hated him deeply.

Booth belonged to a family of renowned artists that included people of diverse persuasions. He, however, supported the southern states, which had decided to secede from the northern states in 1861 following Lincoln's election. The cotton-producing states saw their economies threatened by Lincoln's abolition of slavery. The dispute over whether to maintain or dissolve the union had erupted into a civil war. After nearly four years and more than 600,000 deaths, however, the end of the conflict was near. Richmond, the Confederate capital, had fallen, and one of its leading generals, Robert E. Lee, had surrendered.

From the circle of conspirators, he was a soldier, ran a bar and ended up with a coffin company

In the early afternoon, to scout the area, Booth went for a drink at the Star Saloon and Restaurant, the dark, elegant bar with a wood ceiling that shared a wall with Ford's Theatre. The drink was served by Scipione Grillo, the bar's co-owner, as Kathryn Canavan notes in Lincoln's Final Hour (2015).

What the young actor didn't know, and what very few others did until now, is that the other owner, Peter Taltavull, was in fact the Menorcan Pere Taltavull Pons. Born in Maó on December 8, 1825, as evidenced by the birth certificate that La Vanguardia has located in the local civil registry. The adventure that would eventually link him to Lincoln's assassination began in 1842 when, at the age of 17, he enlisted in the naval service of the American frigate Brandywine. Arriving in Norfolk in July, the young man enlisted in the Marine Corps in Washington in August.

Instead of entering as a private, as was customary before receiving any rank, however, Taltavull must have demonstrated musical talent and was assigned to the marching band, where he met Grillo, also a musician. This journal has traced his story based on documentation held at the Marine Corps Archives (USMC) and the U.S. National Archives.

According to his file, the Minorcan could have served in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and also at the beginning of the American Civil War, between January and December 1861, when he terminated his enlistment. In late 1864, Taltavull, who lived above a restaurant he ran in the Navy Yard neighborhood, the city's shipyards, partnered with Grillo to run the Star Saloon.

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The following year, Taltavull—already called Peter and sometimes losing the "L" in his surname—married Elizabeth Evans, a native of Virginia. They had six boys and three girls, so it's likely there are several surviving children. Perhaps to support his large family, the Minorcan reenlisted in the Marine Corps in mid-March 1865.

Barely a month later, on the evening of April 14, while the Star Saloon was buzzing with anticipation of Lincoln's appearance in the adjoining theater, John Wilkes Booth entered for the second time that day. Taltavull himself, as he later stated, served him a whiskey and a glass of water around ten o'clock. It was an unusual request. The actor was accustomed to drinking brandy. A quarter of an hour later, the young man made his way to the presidential box without difficulty, probably because he was well-known among the profession.

Taking advantage of a burst of laughter from the audience, he fired a shot from behind at the president's head. The bullet entered his left ear and lodged near his eyes. Booth leaped onto the stage and, to the general astonishment, shouted "Sic always tyrannis!" ("Thus always to tyrants!"—the motto of the state of Virginia). He then fled with a waiting horse. After considering taking Lincoln to the Star Saloon for medical assistance, he was taken to a house across the street. He died early the next morning.

Booth attempted to return to the secessionist states, believing he would be hailed as a hero there. The fact is that many of the Confederate leaders repudiated the crime at a time when the end of the war was in sight. Vilified by public opinion, Booth took refuge in a Virginia farmhouse. A week after his act, federal troops discovered him there. To force him out, they set a fire. Unwilling to surrender, however, a soldier's shot fatally wounded him. At the end of May 1865, the Confederacy surrendered.

As it happens, Taltavull was a youthful friend of another of the conspirators in the crime, David Herold. The Minorcan remained in the Marines until March 1869. He was 45 years old. Throughout his life, he held various jobs, such as running a grocery store, a bar, and a restaurant, as a carpenter, a wallpaperer, and an upholsterer, until he began making coffins in the 1870s. The Taltavull Funeral Home business was passed down through generations until the end of the twentieth century in Washington. When he died, at the age of 55, on April 8, 1881, in his obituary, the Evening Star noted that he was one of the finest horn soloists in the country. The Minorcan, who played a role in the assassination that marked the history of the United States, rests in the Capitol's Congressional Cemetery.