St. Peter's or Horsehead? Is the Stage Route the Answer?

[L Verge]

I found the article on the stage run that I did centuries ago. It is now part of the training manual that we give to our guides. The mail route from 1860-64 was as follows:

"Leave Washington three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 am, via Silver Hill, Surratt's, T.B., Beantown, Bryantown, Charlotte Hall, Chaptico, to Leonardtown by 10 pm the same day.

"Leave Leonardtown three times a week on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 4 am to arrive in Washington by 7 pm the same day." I never pursued the route into 1865, because the Surratts were no longer on the route and running the post office at that time.

Every one of those towns still exists with the exception of Beantown. A few remnants of it were still around when I was a child, so I know where it was. That is the one place that could make it go either way, but my inclination is to say that, IF BOOTH FOLLOWED THE STAGE ROAD, he did not do the old (and I think longer) route via Horsehead.

HOWEVER, by going that way, he would have had to double-back to get to Dr. Mudd's from Beantown unless he knew a shortcut through the fields. Getting to Beantown would put him within spitting distance of Bryantown also, which had been closely monitored during the war and would be one of the first places that the Union forces would think of going.

We know that Herold was familiar with families that lived along the route from Surrattsville to Horsehead and further because I believe that he mentions them in his statement in the War Department files. Louise Mudd Arehart always swore that her family claimed that the riders came from the direction of Horsehead. Good luck figuring all this out.

BTW: Some of the history of mail service during the mid-1800s is quite fascinating.