Visitor's Passes to Prisoners

[Susan Higginbotham]

(10-11-2014 11:36 AM)Dave Taylor Wrote:  

(10-11-2014 10:59 AM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  I had been trying to find a release date for Anna Surratt, and was able to determine that she was released either on May 31 or June 1.

Thanks for the information, Susan.

Since the records you were looking at were morning reports, it is probable that Anna Surratt was released during the day of May 31st with the release being noted on the morning report for June 1st. I have a hand written copy of the committal/transfer/release logs that was transcribed by James O. Hall. Copies of those are in the James O Hall Research Center.

I assume that you were already well aware that Nora Fitzpatrick was arrested with the household, released, and then rearrested a couple days later. That information is also in the records.

You motivated me to pick up and reread parts of Virginia Lomax's book. I can just see Mrs. Surratt, imprisoned at the Old Capitol, caring for Mrs. Baxley's son during his illness and death. She also was probably one of the "few of us" who "were permitted to be present" at his funeral services in the prison's "lumber room".

Colonel Colby also has Mrs. Surratt attending William Baxley's funeral: "She was accompanied to the cemetery in the same carriage by Mrs. Surratt (who was afterward hanged for complicity with President Lincolns assassination), and a couple of guards detailed for the purpose."

http://www.civilwarhome.com/oldcapitolprison.htm

One thing I realized when I was working on the timelines for all of this, though, is that Miss Lomax wasn't actually a witness to some of the events she recounts in her memoir, and the memoir gives the impression she was in prison much longer than she actually was. William Baxley, for instance, died on April 22, five days before Miss Lomax was imprisoned, so her account of his death is secondhand. Mrs. Baxley in her diary doesn't mention Mrs. Surratt's presence at her son's deathbed, although her presence at the funeral suggests to me that she was probably there when he died, or at least was there to help his grieving mother afterward. Miss Lomax also claims that Anna Surratt and Nora were released when the trial began, but Nora wasn't released until May 22, the day she gave her testimony for the prosecution, and Anna wasn't released until May 31. Miss Lomax was released well before either young woman--on May 2--so I suspect parts of her memoir were actually based on the recollections of others, possibly her friends the Greens.

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(10-11-2014 11:52 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Mrs. Baxley herself is a very "interesting" lady. From the little bit that I know about her (and we do have a small file at the museum), she would have been one of those women who drove her guards and prison superintendents crazy. A Surratt Society member wrote an article about her and Mrs. Surratt's caring for her dying son many years ago for our Courier.

The file is on its way to me! I've been trying to figure out when she died. The last I can find of her is from 1867, when General Lee wrote a letter to her (she was then in Baltimore) in reference to a donation he had made to a group called the Southern Orphan Association, of which Mrs. Baxley was the corresponding secretary. Evidently at this point the association had split into two factions, each claiming to represent the group, and General Lee had sent his donation to the wrong faction (in Mrs. Baxley's view).

She doesn't turn up in the 1870 census or in any city directories that I've found. I thought for a while that she might have remarried, but it turns out she wasn't free to, as she had received a divorce from bed and board from her husband, Joshua Baxley, in 1860 (in essence, a legal separation) as opposed to an absolute divorce. He didn't die until many years later.