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The improbable object exists in this county — the carriage that carried President and Mrs. Lincoln to Ford's Theatre on the night of the assassination — and its seat is the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, not this ground. The object's record is documentary, not traditional. The carriage is an 1864 barouche built by Wood Brothers of New York and presented to Lincoln by New York citizens; it carried the Lincolns to Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. On May 11, 1865, Robert Lincoln sold it for 1,000 dollars to Dr. F. B. Brewer of Westfield, New York, on the Lincoln Financial Foundation's compiled newspaper record. Clement Studebaker began the company collection that holds it with the carriage that carried the Marquis de Lafayette on his 1824–1825 American tour, purchased in 1887. The accounts of the Lincoln carriage's own purchase conflict, and the conflict prints whole: the museum-history account dates the Studebaker acquisition to 1889, following the Lafayette purchase of 1887, while the Lincoln Financial Foundation's compiled record dates the purchase to 1892 and places the carriage in the Studebaker exhibit at the Columbian Exposition. What does not conflict is the seat: the collection — the world's largest gathering of United States presidential carriages, on the museum's account — passed to the City of South Bend with the company's deed of its vehicles and archives in 1966, and the Lincoln carriage stands in South Bend today, a designated National Treasure of the collection. Against that documented object, the local test was run: the Osceola Historical Society's collections record and the History Museum's record were searched for any national-history object seated in this town — a relic, a presidential or national-event artifact, a famous person's possession — and none was found. Osceola's improbable-object shelf is empty, and it is printed empty, with the county's one great object named at its true seat so the reader is not left thinking the class itself was folklore.
Sources: Studebaker National Museum histories (Hemmings museum account; Google Arts & Culture and Visit Indiana collection records — Lincoln carriage and Lafayette carriage as designated National Treasures; collection deeded to the City of South Bend, 1966); Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, "Curios and Relics: Vehicles" compiled newspaper record (Wood Brothers barouche; Robert Lincoln's sale of May 11, 1865, for 1,000 dollars; Studebaker purchase dated 1892 — conflicting with the 1889 date in the museum-history account; conflict printed whole). Local test: Osceola Historical Society and History Museum collections records searched, no national object found. Rights basis: published museum and archival facts; no image pulled.