Laura Keene

British actress Laura Keene was playing the lead role in Our American Cousin on the night President Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre. Keene had become a major theatrical attraction in New York City after her arrival in the United States in 1852. By the start of the Civil War, she had also demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for business as the first female theater manager in the country. Our American Cousin was one of her long-running successes, and she brought it to the nation's capital in the spring of 1865.