Mary Elizabeth Surratt and her son, John Harrison Surratt Jr. (1844-1916), gained notoriety for their roles in the events surrounding the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. As a result of her ties to John Wilkes Booth, Mrs. Surratt was arrested, tried, and hanged as a conspirator, marking the first time that the U.S. government had executed a woman.

Born in Prince George's County, Maryland, Mary was the daughter of Archibald and Elizabeth Jenkins. Little is known about her early life. Her father died when she was two years old, leaving his wife to manage the couple's land, slaves, and three children. When Mary was twelve years old, she enrolled in a Catholic school run by the isters of Charity in Alexandria, Virginia. While there, she converted to the Catholic faith.

In 1840, she married John Harrison Surratt. Three children were born of this union: Isaac Douglas in 1841, Elizabeth Susannah (Anna) in 1843, and John Harrison Jr. in 1844. Letters to a priest over the next decades indicate that the marriage was not a happy one. By 1852, the family moved to new lands in what would become known as Surrattsville (now Clinton), Maryland. Here they maintained a farm, tavern, and post office.

When the Civil War began, Mr. Surratt was a staunch secessionist. Although Maryland never left the Union, many of its citizens sided with the Confederacy. The Surratts' oldest son, Isaac, joined the Confederate army; and young John became a Confederate courier. The tavern was a safe house on the espionage route that ran through Southern Maryland. When Mr. Surratt died suddenly in August 1862, the family was heavily in debt. With both sons in Confederate service, the chore of maintaining the property, slaves, and business fell to Mary and Anna.

In the fall of 1864, Maryland passed a new state constitution that outlawed slavery. Without her labor force, Mrs. Surratt decided to rent the country home and move into Washington, DC, to a house on H Street that the family owned. There, she established a boardinghouse to supplement her income. After an introduction by Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, John Wilkes Booth, the actor, became a frequent visitor at the Surratt home.

Booth had concocted a plot to kidnap President Lincoln. As part of that plot, various members of the gang came to the boardinghouse. Guns and other supplies were hidden at the country house. Booth soon changed his plans to assassination.

On April 14, 1865, Booth shot the president at Ford's Theatre in Washington. Fleeing the city, Booth and an accomplice stopped briefly at the Surrattsville tavern to retrieve one of the weapons and some supplies. Her tenant, John M. Lloyd, later testified that Mrs. Surratt had come there that afternoon and had instructed him to "have the shooting irons ready for parties that would call" that night. That testimony was very damaging, and the military tribunal that heard the case found Mrs. Surratt guilty of conspiring in the president's death. On July 7, 1865, she went to the gallows along with three other conspirators.

John Surratt escaped to Canada and Europe and was not captured until 1867. He was tried by a civil court instead of a military tribunal. The jury could not reach a verdict, and ultimately he was released by the government.

Jones, Rebecca C. The Mystery of Mary Surratt: The Plot to Kill President Lincoln . (young readers). Centreville, Md.: Tidewater Publishers, 2004.

Kauffman, Michael W. American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies. New York: Random House, 2004.

Steers, Edward, Jr. Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001.

Trindal, Elizabeth Steger. Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy. Gretna, La.: Pelican Pub. Co., 1996.