Did Luckless Mary Surratt Get a Fair Trial?

[Draggingtree]

Biographic Sketch of Mary Surratt

Mary Jenkins, born in Waterloo, Maryland and schooled in a Catholic female seminary, married John Surratt at age seventeen. In 1853, the Surratts bought 287 acres of land in Prince George's County--about a two-hour horse ride from Washington. Surratt built a tavern and a post office, and the property became known as Surrattsville. (During the Civil War, the tavern apparently served as a safehouse in the Confederate underground network.) The couple raised three children, Isaac, Anna, and John Jr.

 

MARY SURRATT

1823-1865

In 1864, two years after John Surratt died, Mary Surratt decided to move to house she owned in Washington at 541 High Street. The tavern in Surrattsville she rented to an ex-policeman named John Lloyd, who would later provide the key evidence against her in the conspiracy trial.

Mary Surratt's eldest son, John, served in the Civil War as a Confederate secret agent. John Surratt's acquaintances included many of the key figures in the assassination conspiracy, including John Wilkes Booth, George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Lewis Powell.

Lewis Weichmann, who attended college with John Surratt, resided at Mary Surratt's boarding house in Washington during the period in which the conspiracy plot was hatched. Weichmann, although describing his landlord as "exemplary" in character and "lady-like in every particular," provided testimony that incriminated Mary Surratt. He described numerous private conversations in the Surratt house between Mary and Booth, Powell, and other conspirators. Typically, according to Weichmann, Booth would ask Mary--if John were not at home--if she could "go upstairs and spare a word." He testified that on April 2 Mary Surratt asked him "to see John Wilkes Booth and say that she wished to see him on 'private business'"--and that Booth visited with her in her home that evening. He told of Booth giving him $10 on the Tuesday before the assassination which he was to use to hire a buggy to take Mary Surratt to Surrattsville to collect--according to Surratt--a small debt.

On the day of the assassination, April 14, Mary Surratt sent Weichmann to hire a buggy for another two-hour ride to Surrattsville. Weichmann reported that Surratt took along "a package, done up in paper, about six inches in diameter."

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/lincolnconspiracy/surrattm.html#Trial