August 20, 2011: Last night we watched
The Conspirator. So today we set off to visit Suratt's Tavern in
Surrattsville (now Clinton), Dr. Mudd's home near Beantown and Dr. Mudd's tomb in St. Mary's church yard near Bryantown.
Surratt's Tavern (1852) is owned and operated by the Prince George's County Department of Parks and Recreation. The guide was factual and not biased. The tour started in the tavern room that also served as a post office, both U.S. and Confederate!
Mrs. Surratt owned the center table and the desk that sit in the parlor:
Male boarders and tavern guests could purchase meals which they ate in this dining room:
Female tavern guests were entertained only in the parlor and ate any purchased meals in the family dining room (
left) next to the kitchen. Mrs. Surratt owned the decanter set that sits on the sideboard in the family dining room.
Like most Southern Maryland landowners, the Surratts owned slaves and opposed Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1860. Their eldest son went to Texas to fight for the Confederacy and their youngest son John became a Confederate courier. After Mr. Surratts death in 1862, John succeeded his father as Surrattsville postmaster but was eventually dismissed in 1863 for disloyalty. To make ends meet (and perhaps to further espionage activities), Mrs. Surratt leased out the Surrattsville homestead and family rental property on H Street NW which she ran as a boarding house. Dr. Samuel A. Mudd introduced John to John Wilkes Booth and John became a part of Booth's conspiracy to kidnap Lincoln. The kidnap attempt failed and guns and supplies were stored under the floor boards at Surratts Tavern.
This upstairs bedroom door opens into an attic space above the kitchen in the tavern/home.
Following the failed kidnapping attempt, the guns were hid between the dining room ceiling and the bedroom floor:
Mrs. Surratt's tavern tenant John Lloyd testified at the military trial of the Lincoln conspirators that on the day of the assassination, Mrs. Surratt drove out to Surrattsville and gave him a package and told him to have the shooting arms ready for pick up. Later that night, Booth and David Herold arrived at the tavern to pick up the package and one of the rifles. Lloyd hid the remaining rifle, not between the ceiling and floor, but down inside the wall between the family dining room and the kitchen.
Booth and Herold rode south almost 14 miles to the
country home of Dr. Mudd, where at 4 a.m. on Saturday, April 15, 1865 they sought medical care for Booth's broken leg:
The
Mudd home was preserved by the Mudd family and is operated by a private foundation. No photography is permitted inside. The front parlor (to the right of the door above) has the original sofa in which Booth lay down. He was moved to the bedroom immediately above, where Dr. Mudd set his leg. Among other things, the house contains pieces of furniture made by Dr. Mudd while he was imprisoned in
Fort Jefferson on Dry Tortugas.
The tour here is less factual. They firmly believe that Dr. Mudd was not part of the conspiracy, yet they remain decidedly Confederate in their sympathies. They do allow as how Dr. Mudd went into Bryantown during Saturday, while Booth and Herold remained in his home; that Dr. Mudd there leared of the assasination but failed to alert the Federal troops in Bryantown; instead Dr. Mudd returned to the farm and insisted that the men get on their way. If he wasn't a part of the conspiracy, Dr. Mudd was certainly an accessory after the fact.
This is the path Booth and Herold took toward the
Zekiah Swamp:
The out buildings at the farmstead house several museums including farm machinery, and a tobacco barn:
And a Civil War museum which is mostly Confederate:
Dr. Mudd is buried six miles farther south in the church yard of
St. Mary's Catholic Church (1793) near
Bryantown. [The 1846 church was rebuilt in 1966.] Before the events of 1863-1865, Mrs. Surratt's daughter Anna had attended Miss Winifred Martin's school which
was operated in connection with St. Mary's Catholic Church in Bryantown.
This tree was damaged over a year ago when a limb constituting about a third of the tree came down in a big thunderstorm. The rest of the tree has been leaning precariously toward the street ever since. Although we reported the tree to the city, and several neighbors also reported the tree to the city, the city decided there was nothing to worry about. For over 12 months, folk have avoided parking under the tree. Well, another major limb has now fallen into the street and the hurricane is barely begun.
