If you were Louisa Petersen, perhaps you would remember moving to this neighborhood with your parents to the house they built here in 1849. Perhaps you heard stories of the old country and dreams about the future and realized that you were joining other families who had come from Germany to make a new life in the United States.

If you looked through the remains that archaeologists have recovered lifetimes later, you’d finger the straight pins and buttons of bone, shell, metal and glass and be reminded of your father William’s trade as a tailor. How much would you remember about the brothers Henry and Julius Ulke, among all the boarders who lived with your family? They were photographers but they were also amateur entomologists. Would you associate the microscope slide in the archaeological collection with their study of insects?

Whatever else you might remember of life at 516 10th Street, you would never forget April 14, 1865. The night that President Abraham Lincoln was carried to your home after being shot at Ford’s Theatre life changed forever for your family. You wrote in your diary about the immense sadness and grief felt by the family and the way that people tore up carpets and other items from your home as grim souvenirs of the House Where Lincoln Died.