Existing comment:
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd: Treating an Assassin:
This house was the home of Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd and his wife, Sarah Frances Dyer. Early on the morning of April 15, 1865, John Wilkes Booth arrived here with a companion, David E. Herold, and asked Mudd to set Booth's broken leg. Afterward, as Booth rested in an upstairs bedroom, Mudd rode into Bryantown, then returned home late in the afternoon to find his visitors departing.
Questioned later by U.S. authorities, Mudd claimed he did not recognize Booth or know that he was being sought, and only learned of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination in Bryantown. Other witnesses stated, however, that late in 1864, Booth had met Mudd at St. Mary's Catholic Church, below Bryantown, while visiting Charles County ostensibly to purchase real estate. He then came here, spent the night, and bought a horse from Mudd's neighbor. Mudd allegedly accompanied Booth into Bryantown and introduced him to a friend, Confederate agent Thomas Harbin. A few days later, a witness stated, Mudd met Booth again in Washington and introduced him to John H. Surratt.
Charged with conspiring with Booth from the beginning, Mudd claimed that the earlier meetings were innocent, Booth had been disguised on April 15, and he had only done his duty as a physician. Convicted and sentenced to life in prison at Fort Jefferson in the Florida Keys, Mudd distinguished himself treating sick prisoners and guards alike during a deadly 1867 yellow fever epidemic. President Andrew Johnson pardoned him in 1869. Mudd died here on January 10, 1883. |