To make money, Mary started renting rooms in her Washington, D.C. residence located at 541 H Street. (The photo to the left is a Library of Congress photograph of Mary Surratt's boardinghouse taken during the nineteenth century.)  During the Civil War, Mary's son, John, became a Confederate spy and messenger. John Jr. met John Wilkes Booth, and early in 1865, Booth became a frequent visitor to the boardinghouse. Other people, later identified as co-conspirators, also frequented the boardinghouse. It is unclear if Mary Surratt knew what all the "activity" was about.

Booth originally planned to kidnap Abraham Lincoln. In connection with that plot some of Booth's co-conspirators hid two Spencer carbines in the joists of an unfinished loft in John Lloyd's leased tavern. Apparently Lloyd had misgivings over the hiding of weapons in the building, but he allowed it to happen.

On April 11, 1865, Mrs. Surratt made a trip to Surrattsville. She traveled with Louis J. Weichmann, one of her boarders (pictured to the right). During the trip, they met John Lloyd on the road at Uniontown. According to Lloyd, Mrs. Surratt told him the "shooting irons" would be needed soon. This was a reference to the rifles which had been hidden in the tavern by Booth's co-conspirators.

Three days later, on the day of the assassination, Mrs. Surratt made another trip to Surrattsville. Again Weichmann accompanied her in a hired buggy. This time, according to Lloyd, she delivered Booth's French field glasses and reminded him to ready the weapons hidden at the tavern he leased from her. Lloyd testified Mary "told me to have those shooting-irons ready that night, there would be some parties who would call for them." 

It was likely that Lloyd, a heavy drinker, was drunk during this conversation with Mary Surratt. At midnight, after the assassination, Booth and David Herold stopped at the tavern to collect these items.

Nowadays the boardinghouse is the Wok and Roll Restaurant (left), and the tavern (pictured below) is the Surratt House Museum. The Surratt House Museum complex is owned and operated by a government agency, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, Department of Parks and Recreation, Prince George's County, Natural and Historical Resources Division. The volunteer Surratt Society, among many wonderful things, assists with the interpretation of the site. It has been a very productive joint effort between public and private support for over 30 years.

The carte-de-visite (left) entitled Morning, Noon, and Night was taken from a mantel at the Surratt boardinghouse during the police search of the premises. On the back of the carte-de-visite, Anna Surratt had hidden a photograph of John Wilkes Booth. An anonymous donor graciously contributed the image of Morning, Noon, and Night to this website.

Mary Surratt claimed total innocence. She said she knew nothing of Booth's plans, and that her trips to Surrattsville had to do with collecting some money she was owed by a man named John Nothey.

One thing that looked suspicious about Mrs. Surratt was that she claimed she had never seen Lewis Powell before when he appeared at her boardinghouse on April 17. He had been there many times before the assassination. Was she lying, or was this due to poor eyesight?

Mrs. Surratt was tried along with seven men. Her attorneys, Frederick A. Aiken and John W. Clampitt, were inexperienced. In jail Lewis Powell maintained Mrs. Surratt was 100% innocent. However, she was convicted mostly due to the testimony of John Lloyd and Louis Weichmann. These men drew great criticism for their testimony. Nearing age 60 and dying, on June 2, 1902, Weichmann allegedly called to his sisters, asked them to get pen and paper, and told them to write "This is to certify that every word I gave in evidence at the assassination trial was absolutely true; and now I am about to die and with love I recommend myself to all truth-loving people." However, this statement has never been produced and must presumed to be lost. Also, John Lloyd stuck to his damaging testimony at the 1867 trial of John Surratt.

In court Mrs. Surratt was dressed in black, with her head covered in a black bonnet. Her face was mostly hidden behind a veil. The jury voted the death penalty for her but added a recommendation for mercy due to her "sex and age." The recommendation was that the penalty be changed to life in prison. (** see below **)

Four years later Anna Surratt made a successful plea to the government for her mother's remains. Today, Mary Surratt is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C. The address of the cemetery is 1300 Bladensburg Road, NE. Her headstone reads simply "MRS. SURRATT." (The photograph is from Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy by Elizabeth Steger Trindal.) Anna Surratt and Isaac Surratt were buried on each side of their mother. John Surratt was buried in Baltimore. Strangely, John Lloyd, whose testimony was so damaging to Mary, was buried less than 100 yards south of her in the same cemetery. His simple tombstone is marked John M. Lloyd.

Elizabeth “Bessie” Jenkins, Mary Surratt’s mother, passed away in June 1878 at age 84. She was buried at St. Ignatius Church on Brinkley Road in Oxon Hill, Maryland. She never made a public comment about her daughter’s execution.

Historical opinion is divided on the subject of Mary Surratt's guilt or innocence. In 1977 a "Lost Confession" of George Atzerodt surfaced. Regarding Mary Surratt, Atzerodt stated, "Booth told me that Mrs. Surratt went to Surrattsville to get out the guns (Two Carbines) which had been taken to that place by Herold. This was Friday." On the face of it, this statement by Atzerodt would certainly seem to point towards Mary Surratt's complicity with John Wilkes Booth. (For the full text of Atzerodt's lost confession, CLICK HERE.) Although no one knows for certain, it seems at least possible that Mary knew about the plot to kidnap the president, but may not have known about the plan to assassinate him. Several good arguments for Mary’s innocence are made by Elizabeth Steger Trindal in her article entitled The Two Men Who Held The Noose in the July 2003 edition of the Surratt Courier.