History, Bitches: History Bitches Fieldtrip #5: Mary Surratt's Boardinghouse and Mount Olivet Cemetery

Mary Elizabeth Jenkins Surratt, c. 1850

This Saturday, my friend George (of Bricktop podcast and Eater DC fame) and I drove out to Mount Olivet Cemetery; I wanted to photograph Mary Surratt’s grave. On July 7, 1865, Mary was bestowed the unlucky distinction of becoming the first woman executed by the U.S. government. She received this “honor” for her reputed participation in the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln.

Mary was born on a tobacco plantation in southern Maryland; her birth year is alternately cited as 1820 and 1823. She married John Harrison Surratt, and raised three children-Isaac, Elizabeth Susanna “Anna,” and John, Jr. Mary became a widow after John, a heavy drinker, collapsed from a stroke and died. Facing increasing debt, she rented out the family’s Maryland farm and tavern, and relocated to Washington, D.C.

The Surratt's boardinghouse, located at
604 H Street, N.W. Washington, DC
is now the Chinese/Japanese restaurant
Wok and Roll

The Surratt’s were southern sympathizers; Isaac served as a Confederate cavalryman, and John, Jr. was employed by the Confederate Secret Service. The family’s Maryland tavern had functioned as a “safe house” for rebel agents, and Mary’s Washington boarding-house accommodated similar customers. On December 23, 1864, John, Jr. met John Wilkes Booth. Subsequently, the residence became the headquarters of his scheme to kidnap (this was the original plot) Lincoln.

Mary’s complicity in Lincoln’s murder remains contested. Besides intentionally harboring the conspirators, John M. Lloyd, who’d leased the Surratt’s tavern, testified Mary visited the property several times escorted by men later exposed as Booth’s accomplices. Firearms for the plotters were concealed there. The day of the assassination, Lloyd indicated she directed him to “have those shooting-irons ready that night, there would be some parties who would call for them.”

Washington, D.C. heritage trail marker
outside the Surratt’s boardinghouse

Though steadfastly proclaiming guiltlessness, Mary was convicted, by a military tribunal, of treason, conspiracy, and plotting homicide. She was sentenced to death; collaborators Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt were condemned, too. Mary’s daughter and two lawyers pleaded vainly for leniency. Signing her death warrant, President Andrew Jackson supposedly remarked Mary had “kept the nest that hatched the egg.”

More than 1,000 spectators congregated to witness the hangings. Lewis Powell, standing beside her on the gallows, declared, “Mrs. Surratt is innocent. She doesn't deserve to die with the rest of us.” Mary’s last utterance was, “Please don't let me fall.”

Mary’s grave is located at section 12-F, Lot 31
of Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Her remains, and those of the other condemned, were buried inside the Old Capitol Prison. After many fruitless struggles, her body was released to her daughter. She, and her brother Isaac, are interred beside their mother in unmarked graves. In a last sardonic twist, John M. Lloyd, whose testimony aided Mary’s conviction, is entombed less than 100 yards away. Despite searching, George and I couldn't find his tombstone.

Besides the Surratt’s boardinghouse, George and I stopped by Ford’s Theatre and across the street at the house where President Lincoln died.