The Day Lincoln Was Shot by Jim Bishop Page A

she was fond of young David Herold, who was full of tall tales of hunting in her own southern Maryland; she didn’t like George Atzerodt, whom the boarders called “Port Tobacco.” Mrs. Surratt was, by all the rules of evidence, a pious zero with a penchant for falling on evil days. There is no corroborative evidence to show that she ever knew anything about a plot.
    Mrs. Surratt had three children: Isaac, a Confederate soldier; John, a Confederate courier; and Anna. The boardinghouse kept Mrs. Surratt and Anna alive. Years before, she and her husband had had a farm and a tavern in southern Maryland and the government had made Mr. Surratt a postmaster and had called the crossroads Surrattsville. A few years ago, Mr. Surratt had died and his widow learned that the farm and tavern were difficult to administer. She had called John home from St. Charles College, near Ellicott’s Mills and, for a while, the boy filled his father’s shoes as a local postmaster. The appointment went to someone else, and John found that the rest of it had no appeal for him. He was a tall, blond, intelligent boy with cavernous eyes and a domed forehead. He was now twenty, and so he grew a wispy goatee.
    Mrs. Surratt leased farm and tavern to Mr. John Lloyd, a drunkard with a poor memory. She took John and Anna off to Washington City and opened her impeccable little boarding-house on H Street. She placed advertisements in the Star and the National Intelligencer and she got boarders and set a good table.
    Still, her troubles were economic and she needed every penny due her. She was in debt, for example, to Mr. Charles Calvert of southern Maryland for a few hundred dollars. In protracted correspondence with him, she held him off by saying that, many years ago, her husband had sold a piece of property to Mr. John Nothey and, if she could get him to pay her, she would be happy, in turn, to pay Mr. Calvert.
    Her political horizon was small, and it is doubtful that she understood the issues between the states, but it is beyond argument that her sympathy was with the South and she was certain that the North was wrong in invading the South. She had owned a few slaves at one time, and at least one of them testified that she was harsh; two others testified that she was warm and solicitous. It is known that, at Surrattsville, she had fed passing Union soldiers and refused to accept money for it. Once she found some stray army horses and she had barned them until the proper authorities called for them. She refused to accept payment for feeding them.
    Among her boarders now, all of whom had eaten early today, were Mr. and Mrs. John T. Holahan, and their daughter, fourteen. Mr. Holahan was a big man with big hands. His work was the cutting of tombstones. The Holahans occupied the front room on the third floor and the alcove too. The back room on that floor was used by John Surratt (when he was at home) and a former schoolmate, Louis J. Wiechman. Mr. Wiechman was big and soft and pungent, an overripe melon. He had studied for the priesthood at St. Charles and had failed. He had taught in school for a while, but that job too had sifted through his hands. Now he worked for the United States Government at the Office of the Commissary General of Prisoners. Some of his failures may have been attributable to Wiechman’s personality, which was akin to that of a professional sneak. He felt drawn to eavesdropping and gossip and, at the same time, had the aura of a suffering saint who has been snubbed.
    There was a low-ceilinged attic in the boardinghouse and this was used as a bedroom and dressing room by Miss Anna Surratt and her cousin, Olivia Jenkins. Both were young and coquettish and bought postcard photos of actors and brave Southern generals.
    On the second floor there was a sizable sitting room—which was reached from the outside of the brick house by a white inverted V staircase—and a back parlor. This parlor was used as a double