Mary Surratt

Well, in 1865, Powell started frequenting a boarding house.

And that boarding house was owned by a woman named Mary Surratt.

Mary Surratt was a Confederate sympathizer.

She owned and operated this like really popular tavern boarding house in Maryland.

And what this thing was, it wasn't just a boarding house in Maryland.

What it was, was a Confederate hangout.

It was literally a Confederate hangout.

So at Mary Surratt's townhouse, her boarding house, Powell met somebody.

They didn't kill anybody.

And they hung Mary Surratt, who was a middle aged woman.

And to the last day, you know, everybody thought she was going to be even the executioner supposedly said her, too.

And so even back then, people were kind of sensitized enough to say, well, you can't hang a middle-aged woman, but they did.

Historians are not sure why, but they speculate that he did it because he held strongly pro-Confederate views.

Upon his resignation, he moved to Maryland and in 1864 to the small village of Surrattsville, where he befriended Mary Surratt.

Surratt owned a tavern, an inn, a carriage house, a corn crib, a forge, a granary, a gristmill, a stable, a tobacco curing house, and a wheelwright's shop in the very center of the village.

as well as 200 acres of farmland nearby.

Surratt told Lloyd that she was considering moving into Washington and opening a boarding house and asked if he was interested in leasing all of the things that she held in Surrattsville.

They executed a contract on December 1st, 1864, and Surratt moved into Washington that very same day.

The boarding house in Washington, located at 604 H Street Northwest in what is now Chinatown, soon became a meeting place for John Surratt, Mary Surratt, lewis powell george atzerod davy harold and john wilkes booth as they plotted the assassination of abraham lincoln as part of the conspiracy in march 1865 john sarat atzerod and davy harold hid two rifles ammunition and supplies in the sarat tavern in saratsville On April 11th, Mary Surratt rented a carriage and drove to the tavern to collect, she later said, a debt owed to her by a former neighbor.

But according to Lloyd, Surratt arrived and told him to, quote, get the shooting irons ready, unquote, to be picked up.

And there's even a more obvious case.

Mary Surratt, and I know you know who I'm talking about.

Yes, the owner of the inn where John Wilkes Booth and his conspirators met.

And it wasn't even necessarily Booth.

She was found guilty and sentenced to serve one year in the penitentiary at Blackwell's Island.

Since the foundation of the Republic, she was the first woman, Mrs. Sarrat excepted, to be imprisoned for a political offense.

Respectable society had long before stamped upon her the scarlet letter.

Emma Goldman passed her time in the penitentiary in the capacity of nurse in the prison hospital.

The plot was hatched at the Surratt boarding house.

Mary Surratt was such a hyper-devout Roman Catholic, she would not allow a non-Catholic to be a boarder in her boarding house.

Her son, John Surratt, was the equal partner with John Wilkes Booth.

John Wilkes Booth was a closet Roman Catholic.

It's not even the Freemasons.

It's the Catholic Church, and it's the Jesuits.

Mary Surratt, she was hung with a hood over her neck.

So to the end, who knows if it was really her that was hung or not.