HALSEY’S WITNESS: My Life as Holly Taft
Oct 25, 2026
Janet Kira Lessin | Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. | © 2026 Aquarian Media
Research: Claudia Lenore
Image prompt (title): A collage in rich oil-painting style: a small boy in 1860s clothes peers up from beneath a dark wooden table while the golden soul of Abraham Lincoln rises from a deathbed above him; behind them a weeping willow, a white gazebo and swans on a pond; in one corner two 1960s teenage girls with guitars sit on wide stone steps under a glowing neon PIZZA sign. Warm candlelight, large format, high detail, no text.
Existing art: Halsey’s Witness (Minerva, 2025)
On the morning of April 15, 1865, a boy hid beneath a table in a crowded boarding-house room across from Ford’s Theatre and watched the President of the United States leave his body. Every grown man in that room kept his eyes on the body, while the boy watched the soul.
That boy was Halsey Cook Taft, called Holly, and I was that boy. In the early 1990s he came back to me as a vision, in the middle of a meditation class at Penn State, and his story snapped into place beside a dream I had carried since childhood: a willow by a small lake, a wife in white with yellow ribbons, four children and a grave that came too soon.
A Vision in the Middle of Class
Image prompt: A 1980s university seminar room at dusk, a circle of seated meditators with closed eyes, a cassette player glowing on a low table; above the circle a faint golden window opens onto an 1860s room where a small boy kneels beneath a table. Soft lamplight, painterly, large format, no text.
I worked at Penn State, and so did my best friend, Megan. Together, we joined a weekly meditation class taught by a couple, a man and a woman, both professors at the university. Each week we listened to a tape on the White Brotherhood, then sat in silence and let the teachings settle into us.
The class asked one more thing: a fifteen-minute meditation every day, at the same hour, with the time held sacred. I sat each evening after work while my husband made dinner. I kept that appointment with myself for a full year.
Our partners resented every minute. My husband and Megan’s boyfriend picked a fight with us nearly every week as we tried to leave, and we went anyway.
The discipline paid off. After that year of practice, I downloaded four lifetimes in a single night. Holly arrived another way. In the early 1990s he came to me in the middle of one of those weekly classes, as a vision so clear I could smell the candle wax and hear the toy soldiers tapping on a wooden floor.
“Every week we fought our way out the door, and every week we went anyway.”
Beneath the Bedside of History
Image prompt: Low angle from under a heavy wooden table in a cramped 1865 bedroom: two boys lie on a worn carpet with painted tin Civil War soldiers lined up between them; through the chair legs, the boots and dark coats of grieving men crowd around a bed. Candlelight, deep shadows, oil painting, large format, no text.
The night John Wilkes Booth fired his pistol at Ford’s Theatre, my half-brother, Dr. Charles Sabin Taft, climbed into the presidential box and reached Lincoln among the first doctors at his side. He stayed with the President through that long night in the Petersen House across the street, and in the vision I stayed there too.
I felt the tension the moment I stepped into that room. Someone had brought Tad over from the White House to be with his mother, and he had sobbed for hours, clinging to her dress, and his grief sent everyone around him into an even more intense state. He made grown men cry, men who now had to hold firm while their President lay dying. Around two or three in the morning, after Mary collapsed and Stanton had her taken from the room, they asked my half-brother Charles, already at the President’s side, to fetch me, Tad’s old playmate, to distract him.
They called me to court, so to speak. By then I had made my peace with the rejection, built a good life of my own, and was doing quite well. Yet who else could calm poor Tad? So there I was, settled at last into my new circumstances, and in one night I found myself back in the throes of it, high drama, more intense than anyone could have imagined.
Who could have predicted the assassination? In hindsight, given the politics of the day, it was a logical turn of events. At fifteen, though, I thought like what I was: half man, half child, with plenty of growing up still ahead of me. That night I grew up, and in many ways I grew old.
“That night I grew up, and in many ways I grew old.”
Tad and I hid beneath the two tables on the right side of the room, the grown-ups’ voices low above us. We passed the hours the way boys do, setting out painted metal soldiers on the carpet and marching them back and forth. Someone had told us to stay small and still, and we did our best. Once a soldier toppled over, and the click of tin on wood sounded as loud as a whisper in church.
I did everything I could to keep Tad busy, yet those hours felt anything but playful. I could cut the tension with a knife. Even then, as a sensitive soul, I felt everything coming from everyone in that room. My President and my friend were dying. He was a grown man and a great one, yet he always spoke to me with respect and gave me his full attention. For a while he was like a second father to me: the father of our country, and an older friend who gave a boy his dignity.
“He was the father of our country, and an older friend who gave a boy his dignity.”
Whenever Tad needed the necessary, I took his hand and led him out with a gentle grip, past the boots and the grief, then brought him back to our hideaway beneath the tables.
Sometime in those dark hours, Tad whispered that he was hungry. In all the turmoil, the grown-ups had forgotten to feed him. So we crept down to the kitchen, found someone still awake, and came away with a little bread and cheese, which we ate side by side under the table like two soldiers sharing rations in the field.
Above us sat the men who ran the Union: cabinet secretaries, generals, doctors. At the foot of the bed, in a chair, sat Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, a man whose blood runs through my own family a century later.
Existing art: The Hidden Gaze (Minerva, 2025)
What Holly Saw
Image prompt: The deathbed of Abraham Lincoln seen from below: a translucent golden figure of Lincoln lifts gently from his still body toward the ceiling, serene and free, while grieving men in black frock coats look only at the bed; beneath the table one boy gazes up in awe as his friend keeps playing with toy soldiers. Luminous, reverent, oil painting, large format, no text.
Sometime before dawn the air in the room shifted. It held the same warmth and the same smell of candle smoke, yet something beneath the hush had changed.
I looked up from the soldiers. Through the chair legs, I saw a golden light lift from the man on the bed, rising like breath on a cold morning, shimmering like starlight. It drifted upward, and for one long moment the whole room seemed to forget how to move.
The light rose out of the hands of my own half-brother. Charles sat at the head of the bed, cradling the President’s head as he and Dr. Charles Crane had done in turns all night, holding Lincoln steady as Lincoln slipped free.
I glanced from face to face. Every man there kept his eyes on the body. Tad kept his eyes on our soldiers. I alone watched the President go free.
Moments later Surgeon General Joseph Barnes pressed his fingers to Lincoln’s wrist, waited and declared him dead. The clock read 7:22 in the morning, April 15, 1865. I already knew. I had seen him leave.
Edwin Stanton ran the house that night, giving orders from the back parlor, while Gideon Welles kept vigil at the bedside, a man of action, steady when others fell apart. As soon as Lincoln was gone, Welles leaned toward my half-brother, Charles, and spoke low and respectfully: “Get those boys out of here. Now.” Charles whisked us away, Tad back to the White House and me home, before the grown-ups’ grief could swallow us whole.
“Every man there kept his eyes on the body. I alone watched the President go free.”
Existing art: The Departure of President Lincoln (Minerva, 2025) · Beneath the Bedside of History (Minerva, 2025)
The Boy Called Holly
Image prompt: The White House in 1861: four boys in Civil War era clothes charge across a sunny lawn with a toy cannon and wooden swords, a young woman in a hoop skirt watching from the portico with a smile. Bright, joyful, painterly, large format, no text.
Halsey Cook Taft was born on August 17, 1849, in Lyons, New York. His father, Horatio Nelson Taft, practiced law and served as an examiner in the U.S. Patent Office in Washington. His mother, Mary Malvina Cook, named him for her father, Jeremiah Halsey Cook. Everyone called him Holly.
When Abraham Lincoln moved into the White House in 1861, Mary Todd Lincoln wanted playmates for her two youngest sons, Willie and Tad. She asked sixteen-year-old Julia Taft to bring her little brothers, Bud, fourteen, and Holly, twelve. The four boys became inseparable. They turned the White House into a playground, staged circuses in the attic and once stormed a cabinet meeting with a toy cannon.
The laughter stopped in February 1862, when typhoid took Willie. Grief broke Mary Lincoln, and the sight of Bud and Holly reminded her too much of the son she lost, so the playdays ended. The bond between Holly and Tad held, and so did his family’s place near the President: his half-brother, Dr. Charles Sabin Taft, became one of the physicians who tended Lincoln on his last night.
Mary Lincoln was fragile and fierce at once, strong and delicate in the same breath. After Willie died, my presence became more than she could bear. I believe I reminded her of the son she had lost. Tad, sick and grieving himself, grew lonelier than ever, and the loneliness made him wilder.
Holly grew up, lived out his days in Sag Harbor on Long Island, and died there on September 28, 1897, at forty-eight. He rests in Oakland Cemetery.
Pay Attention
Image prompt: A 1960s Pittsburgh living room in golden lamplight: a girl with long blonde hair, bangs and blue eyes sits close beside her mother, a treasured old book on Abraham Lincoln open across their laps; a faint ghostly image of a bearded nineteenth-century statesman watches from a portrait on the wall. Warm, intimate, oil painting, large format, no text.
That moment under the table left its mark on my soul, and the mark traveled with me into this life. As a little girl in Pittsburgh, I devoured every book about Lincoln I could find.
My mother, June, owned one Lincoln book she treasured above the rest. When we had the house to ourselves, she brought it out, opened it across our laps, and let me turn the pages, so long as I handled it with care. She told me, with real pride, that her great-uncle was Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy. She held to that all her life. Years later, my own research turned up a cousin connection to Welles as well, so the family threads run to him by more than one road.
Even then, I knew this meant something. My soul whispered: Pay attention. This is a piece of your puzzle.
“Pay attention. This is a piece of your puzzle.”
Existing art: Janet Discovers Lincoln (Minerva, 2025)
The Man in the White Suit
Image prompt: A handsome young Victorian man in a white suit runs across a meadow of daisies and yellow wildflowers toward a white gazebo beneath weeping willows beside a small lake, a picnic spread on a blanket nearby, with two great white swans, their two cygnets, ducks and geese; a fair-haired woman in a long white dress with yellow ribbons in her dress and hair runs to meet him, ribbons streaming in the wind, as two little girls in white with pink and blue ribbons and two little boys in navy blue race behind her. Easter morning light, joyful, oil painting, large format, no text.
Long before Penn State, on the edge of my teens, I began dreaming about a man in the late 1800s, and years passed before I understood that he was Holly grown up, the life my soul leapt into straight from Jules, the young man who fell to his death in the Bastille. Over and over I returned to the same scene, and each time I saw a little more.
I am young and handsome, dressed in a white suit, and I run across a meadow thick with daisies and yellow wildflowers. Ahead of me stands a white gazebo beneath weeping willows, on the bank of a small lake where two giant white swans glide with their two babies among the ducks and geese.
My wife has spread a picnic beside the gazebo, and now she runs toward me with a huge smile. She wears a long white dress with yellow ribbons, and more yellow ribbons in her fair hair, all of them streaming in the wind. Our four children, two girls and two boys, run with her in their Sunday best. The girls wear white with pink and blue ribbons and flowers, maybe little bonnets. The boys wear navy blue. Perhaps it is Easter. The weather is perfect, and we all glow with happiness.
“I am young and handsome, dressed in a white suit, and I run across a meadow toward everyone I love.”
Existing art: The willow and gazebo (Minerva, 2025) · The family (Minerva, 2025)
Flowers on a Grave
Image prompt: A fair-haired Victorian widow in a black mourning dress and long black veil kneels at a weathered gravestone in a country churchyard, laying a bouquet of daisies; a weeping willow droops over her and ducks drift on a pond in the distance. Late golden light, quiet grief, oil painting, large format, no text.
That joy lasted a breath. The dream jumps forward, and I watch my wife in black, kneeling at my grave with an armful of flowers.
How I died stays hidden from me. A later war, an illness, an accident: the cause matters less than the cost. I left a young wife and four small children, and the life I raced across that meadow to reach ended long before its time.
What stays with me is her grief. I feel it as clearly as I feel the sun on that white suit.
Existing art: The widow at the grave (Minerva, 2025)
Summer of ’69 on the Pizza Steps
Image prompt: Summer night, 1969: two teenage girls with guitars sit off to one side of wide dark slate steps outside an old corner building, a steady red neon PIZZA sign glowing in the glass storefront behind them and a pinball machine lit in the back; one girl fair-skinned with long straight sandy blonde hair, bangs and blue eyes, the other with long straight dark hair parted down the middle and golden brown eyes, both hair to mid-back; a car slows at the curb. Warm, nostalgic, painterly, large format, no text.
Fast forward a century. In 1969 I was fifteen and met Molly, sixteen, a year older than me. We met carrying our guitars, and we harmonized beautifully from the very first song.
That summer we claimed the steps of a pizza parlor as our stage. The building dated from the late 1800s, a corner shop in the commercial district where the sidewalk looped down and around into the neighborhood. The wide steps were dark slate, with room for two girls and two guitars off to one side while customers came and went. A neon sign in the glass storefront said PIZZA and burned steady all night. In the back stood one pinball machine, and we fed it plenty of quarters.
On summer nights, once the heat broke, we sat on those steps and sang the Beatles and every other song of the sixties for whoever walked by. I had long, straight, sandy blonde hair, bangs and blue eyes; Molly wore her long, straight, dark hair parted down the middle, and her eyes shone golden brown. Our hair fell to the middle of our backs, the style of the day. Cars slowed as they passed, and the wolf whistles came often. It was fun and low-key, and I knew we sounded awesome.
We talked until it was time to walk home, Molly toward Emsworth and me toward Avalon, opposite directions. I followed unspoken rules and got home between nine and eleven. And on those steps I felt compelled to tell her about my other lives: the young man who fell to his death in the Bastille, a fall I had dreamed since I was a toddler, and the man in the white suit with his wife and children by the willow. Molly shared her own past-life memories in return, yet when I described the willow and the woman in white, she kept silent.
“When I described the woman in white, Molly kept silent.”
Existing art: Two girls with guitars (Minerva, 2025)
The Letter
Image prompt: A woman’s hands open a handwritten letter at a kitchen table by a sunny window; rising from the page like a dream, a faint golden scene of a white gazebo, a weeping willow and a woman in white with yellow ribbons. Soft, tender, painterly, large format, no text.
Molly and I stayed close for years. Then she married, had children and moved to another state, and we kept our friendship alive the old way, with long letters written by hand and sent through the mail.
One of those letters stopped me cold. Molly wrote that she remembered our life together. She had been my wife. She was the woman in white by the willow, with the yellow ribbons in her hair, and she remembered the grief of losing me, a sorrow that had marked her deeply.
I felt strange reading her words, and at the same time my soul recognized them at once. She spoke the truth, and I knew it.
“She was the woman in white by the willow, and she remembered the grief of losing me.”
Lovers Then, Friends Now
Image prompt: A mosaic portrait of one radiant soul whose face is made of shimmering tiles, each tile a scene: a boy beneath a table, Lincoln’s rising spirit, a man in a white suit by a willow, a widow at a grave, two girls with guitars under a neon sign; golden threads connect every tile into one luminous whole. Cosmic, reverent, large format, no text.
In one life Molly and I loved each other as husband and wife. In this one we met as two teenage girls with guitars, and the love between us took the shape of friendship, warm and true, with nothing romantic in it. We both married and gave our hearts to our husbands. For a while that puzzled me. Should I have felt more?
I understand it now. Souls rotate through roles, lifetime after lifetime: lovers, enemies, parents, children, rulers, servants, friends. Molly came back as my companion this time, and she carried the memory of our marriage across the veil to hand back to me, a confirmation I could hold in my hand on a sheet of notepaper.
Holly showed me what a child can see when the grown-ups look away. He saw a President’s soul go free, and a century later he came back to me in a quiet room at Penn State so I would remember it too. Each memory he brought is another tile in the mosaic of who I am.
She is one of the many who carry one name.
