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The Final Years...
In 1869, the body of John Wilkes Booth was exhumed from his hidden grave on the Arsenal grounds and returned to his family for burial in Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. Mrs. Surratt was given a final burial in Washington's Mount Olivet Cemetery, and David Herold was interred in the city's Congressional Cemetery. Lewis Powell's body would be transferred several times over the years. Also in 1869, President Andrew Johnson pardoned the conspirators housed at Port Jefferson.
What of the three children that Mary Surratt left behind?
Her eldest son, Isaac Douglas Surratt, had served with the Confederacy throughout the war and did not return to this area until September, after his mother's death.
The Surratt daughter, Anna, was the sole support of her mother during the imprisonment, trial, and execution. She now faced the task of settling the troubled financial estates that both parents had left behind. Even with Isaac's support upon his return home, this procedure would drag on until 1869, when public auctions of the property satisfied some (but not all) of the debts.
The youngest son, John Harrison Surratt Jr., slipped from Canada to England and on the continent, using an assumed name to gain a position with the Papal Guards outside the Vatican. John Jr. would finally be extradited in 1867, for trial by a civil court in the United States. After much maneuvering, he would eventually be set free.
Life for the Surratts began to settle down. With the family lands in Surrattsville and the H Street home both sold, the three children migrated towards Baltimore. Anna married Dr. William Tonry, a brilliant Army chemist who lost his job by special order of the War Department four days after the wedding. Isaac Surratt never married, but worked for the Old Bay Steam Packet Company out of Baltimore -- the same company that John Surratt found work with. John soon married Mary Victoria Hunter, second cousin to Francis Scott Key, and would father seven children. Anna and Dr. Tonry had four children.
Anna was the first to die in 1904 after years of ill health. Isaac died in 1907. Both, as well as Dr. Tonry and several Tonry children, are buried in unmarked graves in the Surratt lot in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
John would live until 1916, and today live in New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore. Their Surrattville home would live on to tell the story of desperate times and desperate deeds during the American Civil War.
From 1869 until 1968, the Surratt House with five other owners until it was saved destruction. Community leaders worked with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission to restore it to its place in history. Surratt House Museum opened on May 1, 1976, as the first public historic house museum in Prince George's County. |