Assassination-Related Suicide?

[Cliff Roberts]

Here are a few documents concerning the unlucky Joseph Thomas. He had a brush with the law on January 10, 1865, when he was caught selling liquor to soldiers at a "low den" at No. 18 Bath St. He paid a fine and was released. A few days after his death, the Provost Marshall was ordered to dig up his body and have it "embalmed or preserved for recognition." Nothing was said about sending it to Washington. The order came from Edwin M. Stanton himself and referenced the fact that Thomas was known to have lived in the same house as Payne [sic], the Branson residence at the corner of Fayette and Eutaw. Stanton also ordered the Branson house searched and the inmates arrested.

Thomas' family appealed to a friend in the State Legislature who wrote, on April 28, to Provost Marshal Woolley requesting that the matter be kept from the press on the chance that Thomas was innocent, but that if he was guilty of being connected with the assassination, they wanted the world to know about it.

Finally, here's a clip from the Baltimore Sun, April 25, 1865, p1, describing the suicide of Joseph Thomas, lumber merchant.