Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1894 — O’CONNOR’S PRECIOUS NEEDLES. [ARTICLE]

O’CONNOR’S PRECIOUS NEEDLES.

They Were Used in Sewing the Shroud of Col. Ellsworth, A New York dispatch says:' “John O’Connor, fifty-three years old, of 425 Tenth street, was found lying in an area in Nineteenth street, near Fourth avenue, with a severe cut on the back of his head, —at 8 o’clock last evening. At the West Thirtieth street police station his wound was dressed, and he was locked up on a charge of intoxication. When the ambulance surgeon said he would have to sew up the wound O’Connor remarked that he had some needles, and pulled a little case out of his pocket. In it were two needles. O’Connor said that he had treasured them for years as sacred relics. They were needles, he explained, that were used in sewing up the burial shroud of Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth, of the Fire Zouaves. O’Connor was one of Ellsworth’s Zouaves, and was one of the five men whom Ellsworth took with him to pull down the Confederate flag on the Marshall house, at. Alexandria, at the outbreak of the war. They hauled down the flag, but a man named Jackson, who was the propritor of the hotel, shot and mortally wounded Col. Ellsworth. Frank Brownell, of Washington, who died recently, avenged his death by shooting Jackson. O’Connor enlisted in the navy after the war and served with the Mediterranean squadron. Of late he has been working in a picture frame factory.