Mary Elizabeth (Jenkins) Surratt (1823 - 1865)

Mary Elizabeth Jenkins was born to Archibald and Elizabeth Anne (Webster) Jenkins on a tobacco farm near the southern Maryland town of Waterloo (now known as Clinton). Sources differ as to whether she was born in 1820 or 1823. There is uncertainty as to the month as well, although most sources say May.

She had two brothers, John Zadoc, born in 1822, and James Archibal, born in 1825. Her father died in the fall of 1825 when Mary was either two or five years old. Although her father was a non-denominational Protestant and her mother Episcopalian, Surratt was enrolled in a private Roman Catholic girls' boarding school, the Academy for Young Ladies in Alexandria, Virginia, on November 25, 1835. Mary's maternal aunt, Sarah Latham Webster, was a Catholic, which may have influenced where she was sent to school. Within two years, Mary converted to Roman Catholicism and adopted the baptismal name of Maria Eugenia. She stayed at the Academy for Young Ladies for four years, leaving in 1839, when the school closed. She remained a devout Catholic for the rest of her life.

Marriage

Mary Jenkins met John Harrison Surratt in 1839, when she was 16 or 19 and he was 26. His family had settled in Maryland in the late 1600s. An orphan, he was adopted by Richard and Sarah Neale of Washington, D.C., a wealthy couple who owned a farm. The Neales divided their farm among their children, and Surratt inherited a portion of it. His background was questionable at best, and he had fathered at least one child out of wedlock. They wed in August 1840. John Surratt converted to Roman Catholicism prior to the marriage, and the couple may have wed at a Catholic church in Washington, D.C. We do not know where the marriage ceremony was performed. It appears that they were married at St. Peter’s Catholic Church near the Library of Congress in Washington. This assumption is based on several other assumptions, since the marriage records for that period at St. Peter’s are missing.... As a matter of geography, St. Peter’s would have been the most likely Washington church for the couple to go to for the ceremony. John Surratt lived with the Neales, just across the Eastern Branch of the Potomac (now known as the Anacostia River) in what was then known as Washington County. Young Mary lived with her widowed mother about five miles farther down, across the District line in Prince George’s County.

A survey of the baptismal records for the 1840s shows that all three of the resulting children of John and Mary Surratt were baptized at St. Peter’s Church: Isaac Douglas Surratt, born June 2, 1841, as baptized on July 7, 1841; Elizabeth Susanna Surratt, born January 1, 1843, was baptized on December 10, 1843, and John Harrison Surratt, listed as “...3 years on the last of April,” was baptized on September 20, 1847. (Actually, he was born on April 13, 1844.) The fact that Mrs. Surratt brought each of her three children to St. Peter’s Church for baptism is persuasive.

John Surratt purchased a mill in Oxon Hill, Maryland, and the couple moved there. The Surratts had three children over the next few years: Isaac (born June 2, 1841), Elizabeth Susanna (nicknamed "Anna", born January 1, 1843), and John, Jr. (born April 1844). A survey of the baptismal records for the 1840s shows that all three of the resulting children of John and Mary Surratt were baptized at St. Peter’s Church: Isaac Douglas Surratt, born June 2, 1841, as baptized on July 7, 1841; Elizabeth Susanna Surratt, born January 1, 1843, was baptized on December 10, 1843, and John Harrison Surratt, listed as “...3 years on the last of April,” was baptized on September 20, 1847. (Actually, he was born on April 13, 1844.) The fact that Mrs. Surratt brought each of her three children to St. Peter’s Church for baptism is persuasive.

On the night of August 25-26, 1862, John H. Surratt died suddently, probably of a cerebral hemorrhage or heart attack…Following her husband’s death, the widow Surratt tried desperately to pick up the pieces; but it was an impossible task from the start. He had left her deeply in debt, some of the family’s slaves were gone--probably runaways, and there seemed little hope of collecting on the land [that, in order to cover mounting debts, Mr. Surratt had] sold to John Marshall and John Nothey. There was a war on, and money was scarce for everyone. The tavern bills went uncollected, and there were debts everywhere…Everything went downhill--tavern and farm alike--at Surrattsville. By 1864, life was in turmoil for Mary E. Surratt.

Mrs. Surratt rented the tavern and farm to an ex-policeman named John Lloyd and, in October, 1864, moved to a townhouse which the family owned at 541 H Street in Washington City. There she assumed the respectable occupation of running a boardinghouse. And it was there that John Wilkes Booth came to know the Surratt family.

Following the murder of Abraham Lincoln, a search was started for Booth and his accomplice, David E. Herold, as well as others suspected of having been involved in any way with the assassination. On the night of April 17, 1865, Mary Surratt was arrested at her Washington boardinghouse and then taken before dawn of the next day to the Carroll Annex of the Old Capitol Prison. She remained there until April 30th, when she was transported by Colonel Baker in a buggy to the Washington Arsenal Penitentiary. It was in one of the administrative buildings at the Penitentiary that the assassination conspiracy trial was held.

Mary Surratt was charged with abetting, aiding, concealing, counseling, and harboring her co-defendants. The federal government initially attempted to find legal counsel for Mary Surratt and the others, but almost no attorneys were willing to take the job for fear they would be accused of disloyalty to the Union. Surratt retained Reverdy Johnson as her legal counsel. A member of the military commission trying the conspirators challenged Johnson's right to defend Surratt, as Johnson had objected to requiring loyalty oaths from voters in the 1864 presidential election. After much discussion, this objection was withdrawn, but damage was done to Johnson's influence and he did not attend most of the court sessions. Most of Mary's legal defense was presented by two other lawyers, Frederick Aiken and John Clampitt.

The trial proceedings began on May 9, 1865, and continued until the end of June. On the 28th and 29th of June, the Military Commission which heard the case conferred and decided on the death penalty for Mrs. Surratt and her convicted co-conspirators Lewis Powell (alias Paine), George Atzerodt, and David Herold. The tribunal handed down life imprisonment to other conspirators, including Dr. Samuel A. Mudd. On July 7, 1865, Mary Surratt was hanged, along with Powell, Atzerodt, and Herold, thus marking the first time the U.S. government had executed a woman. Her fate had been sealed by her Surrattsville tenant, John M. Lloyd, who became a state’s witness just prior to the trial. He testified that she had requested that he have field glasses and carbines ready for Booth and Herold when they arrived at the Surratt House late on the night of the assassination. Mrs. Surratt is further alleged to have delivered the field glasses to Lloyd for safekeeping earlier on the same day. Despite defense witnesses that attested to Mrs. Surratt’s reputation as a gentle and deeply religious woman, Lloyd’s testimony placed the rope around her neck.

Ironically, at the time of her death, a case was pending before the Supreme Court, questioning the jurisdiction of military courts in cases involving civilians. In 1866, less than a year after Mary Surratt was hanged, the Supreme Court ruled that a military court had no jurisdiction in civilian cases, if the civil courts were open. When the assassination conspiracy trial was conducted by a military court in 1865, the civil courts in the District of Columbia were open. [Note: It should be clarified that the Court held open the question when dealing with the laws of war. Since Lincoln was assassinated while the Civil War was still going on, a military court might still have been justified.] Some historians believe that, had the Supreme Court ruling come a year earlier, Mary Surratt might never have been executed.

Death

Burial: Mount Olivet Cemetery 6389114

Mary Surratt was the first woman executed by the federal government.

After the hangings, each body was inspected by a physician to ensure that death had occurred. The bodies of the executed were allowed to hang for about 30 minutes. The bodies began to be cut down at 1:53 P.M. A corporal raced to the top of the gallows and cut down Atzerodt's body, which fell to the ground with a thud. He was reprimanded, and the other bodies cut down more gently. Herold's body was next, followed by Powell's. Surratt's body was cut down at 1:58 P.M.[202] As Mary Surratt's body was cut loose, her head fell forward. A soldier joked, "She makes a good bow" and was rebuked by an officer for his poor use of humor.

Upon examination, the military surgeons determined that no one's neck had been broken by the fall. The manacles and cloth bindings were removed (but not the white execution masks), and the bodies were placed into the pine coffins. The name of each person was written on a piece of paper by acting Assistant Adjutant R. A. Watts, and inserted in a glass vial (which was placed into the coffin). The coffins were buried against the prison wall in shallow graves, just a few feet from the gallows. A white picket fence marked the burial site. The night Mary Surratt died, a mob attacked the Surratt boarding house and began stripping it of souvenirs until the police stopped them.

Anna Surratt unsuccessfully asked for her mother's body for four years. In 1867, the War Department decided to tear down the portion of the Washington Arsenal where the bodies of Surratt and the other executed conspirators lay. On October 1, 1867, the coffins were disinterred and reburied in Warehouse No. 1 at the Arsenal, with a wooden marker placed at the head of each burial vault. John Wilkes Booth's body lay alongside them. In February 1869, Edwin Booth asked President Johnson for the body of his brother, John Wilkes Booth.[218] Johnson agreed to turn the body over to the Booth family, and on February 8 Surratt's body was turned over to the Surratt family. Mary Surratt was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C., on February 9, 1869. John M. Lloyd is buried 100 yards from her grave in the same cemetery.

Sources

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/assassination-co-conspirators/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Surratt

Surratt House Museum

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6389114

Census

name: Mary Surratt residence: , Prince Georges, Maryland ward: 9th Election District age: 37 years estimated birth year: 1823 birthplace: Md gender: Female page: 83 family number: 632 film number: 803478 dgs number: 4231338 image number: 00578 nara number: M653 Household Gender Age Birthplace John H Surratt M 47 VA Mary Surratt F 37 MD Issac Surratt M 19 DC Anna Surratt F 17 DC John Surratt M 16 DC 1860 United States Census

MARY SURRATT’S ANCESTORS, MARRIAGE, AND CHILDREN http://www.surratt.org/genealogy/su_genm.html

“Surratt House and Tavern…A Page in American History,” published by the MNCPPC

“The Surratt Family & John Wilkes Booth--Compiled from the research of James O. Hall,”

Acknowledgments