Good Bye Old House

[L Verge]

As many of you know, I entered the study of the Lincoln assassination when I was very young and learned of my family's story that David Herold had spent the night of April 13, 1865, with my great-grandparents in their home in the village of T.B. - leaving behind a nightshirt with the laundry mark of John Surratt in it. When I saw the shirt and heard the story, I was hooked.

My family lived in the house until the mid-1990s when my widowed mother became too fragile to take care of a 13-room Victorian with 4.5 acres of land. She continued to own it, and I took care of it as best as I could until her death in 2009. It has been on the market since that time, but vandals and vermin have had their way with it over the years. What was once a proud old home with lovely gardens around it stood lonely and deserted when even I became afraid to check on it. Rick Smith of this forum has been a good friend over the past five years or so by watching out for it, boarding up windows and doors over and over again, and listening to me complain.

The purpose of this lengthy message is to post an obituary for the old Huntt Home in T.B., Maryland. On the night of May 3-4, vandals had their final say. The house was set on fire and completely destroyed except for three tall chimneys still reaching to the sky and a small portion of what was once a huge parlor - the last section to be added in 1905. The original portion was built ca. 1830, by Jeremiah Townshend, the man who built Surratt House.

Now for the weird part: Get out your ouija boards and seance candles. My daughter and I went down to view the remains this afternoon. Because of my walking problems, I sat in the car while she took photos. As she was walking back up the long lane, she noticed a portion of a charred book. I have no idea the title because only pages 63-88 remain intact and readable. The size indicates a paperback, and the text indicates a historical novel.

What immediately knocked me back in my seat, however, was the content of the first page I read - page 63. First, I see "General Lew Wallace...while watching Conover squirm....'I think we should have these three witnesses investigated. Where did they come from?' Baker, who else?"

The story line then proceeds to take the military commission to Ford's Theatre for their first-hand view of the crime scene. General Hunter is mentioned, Ferguson's Restaurant, Taltavul's Saloon, and on it goes. What are the chances of pages from a book on the Lincoln assassination lying right there at her feet waiting to be picked up among all the ruins?

Lincoln said "We cannot escape history," and he was surely correct when it came to me and the Lincoln assassination. Now I need a history detective to identify the title and author of this book. And, I haven't yet gotten past the first page!