Trial reporter related to defendant

[Jim Woodall]

Seeing as there has been at least one request for the answers, even though it was in another post, here are the complete answers with a bit more info:

Reporter
Richard F Boiseau

Defendant
Mary Surratt

My 4th great grandmother, the reporter's grandmother
Sarah Ann Jenkins

Sarah Ann Jenkins first married Joseph Boiseau about 1819 giving birth to James Thomas Boiseau while they were in Alexandria running a confectionary store. Sarah married Richard Mitchell about 1822 with this marriage generating 3 children including Martha Mitchell. Sarah's third husband was George Arthur Smoot (George's 2nd marriage). In this marriage, two children were born.

James Thomas Boiseau married Deborah Mead. One of their children was Richard F Boiseau.

Martha Mitchell married Thomas Anderson in 1852 as his second wife. Thomas Anderson moved out to Good Hope Road at the fork in the road at the top of Good Hope Hill about the 1830s establishing the blacksmith shop across from the Good Hope Tavern. This is the line from which I am descended. My genealogical hunt began here with notes/lore from family. No mention of Martha's ancestry in the family lore. However, family lore did allude to, somehow, we were related to Mary Surratt (and a few others like Francis Scott Key, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and even Max Baer - Jethro from Beverly Hillbillies).

In 1839, 7 acres of land were sold to Ann Smoot up at Good Hope Hill near Thomas Anderson. This land appears to be the land containing the Good Hope Tavern, which at times was named after Smoot, Jenkins, and others. This tavern stayed in the family until finally sold outside of the family in the late 1890s by a daughter of James Boiseau. The Surratts, some indicate, were married at the Boiseau house up on Good Hope Road. It appears that James Boiseau had his own home, later becoming the Wadsworth house, across from Thomas Anderson.

Sarah Ann Jenkins, at the time Ann Smoot, signed as sponsor on a couple of the baptismal records for Mary Surratt's children.

Later, after the Surratts' house fire, they moved in with Sarah Ann Jenkins' brother Thomas Jenkins of Thomas. Thomas' lands were east/southeast of St. Elizabeth's. A third sibling was living next door, Susan Evans (nee Jenkins), who willed a slave to James Boiseau. A fourth sibling appears to have been living behind Thomas Anderson on the back side of Good Hope Hill. This was Basil Jenkins with his wife, Elizabeth Talbert. She was widowed before 1835, the death of the Jenkins father, Thomas Mitchell Jenkins. The father of Thomas Mitchell Jenkins was Francis Jenkins and his father, Enoch Jenkins.

I believe, from other's research, that the link between this line, going back to a Daniel Jenkins eventually, and Mary Elizabeth Jenkins Surratt, is the Daniel Jenkins. I have not proved to myself this yet, but looking over other people's research, this appears to be the case.

Of interest with this Jenkins line, the Civil War forts around D.C. loved the Jenkins' lands. Fort Baker, originally Camp Good Hope, usurped the Jenkins house on the back of Good Hope Hill as officer's quarters with some indications that General Sickles took it over. And, of course, Thomas Jenkins lands coincided with Fort Snyder with his house being dismantled to provide wood for officer's quarters. Fort Wagner was across the road from Thomas Anderson and from the Good Hope Tavern and maybe had some of James Boiseau's lands. His daughter Ida in the 1890s would file suit to clear title to Chichester lands and some of Fort Wagner.

There are also plenty of other Andersons out in the south east D.C. area and elsewhere around D.C. and Maryland. Part of the lore, yet to be proven, was that Thomas Anderson had angered a union general enough, the general ordered Tom locked up in his corn crib.

What I find interesting is the lack of mention regarding the Jenkins line in the family history/lore. There does seem to be a disruption in the families around the Civil War time.

Whether this is religious, Tom Anderson's first family was Protestant and the second was Catholic (thanks to Sarah), seems unlikely. Why marry Martha Mitchell if it was going to be an issue.

The Civil War is always a possibility. I think the Andersons were anti-slave while the Jenkins certainly had no problems owning.

Could the problem just be issues in one family? Thomas Anderson Jr. got walloped in the head with a blacksmith hammer nearly killing him at the beginning of the war when an apprentice got mad after leaving early to work at the Navy Yard. Tom Jr. went on to work(?) at St. Elizabeth's with his wife living nearby.

Was the problem that the Jenkins had been associated with Mary Surratt prior to the assassination?

I think these families were very cognizant of each other for an extended period. Tom Anderson was a witness on the will of Thomas Mitchell Jenkins going back to before 1835. Sarah's kids seemed to associate with each other but I haven't found the Anderson's interacting except through the Association of Oldest Inhabitants of D.C. and estate management and lawsuits from such. The Andersons definitely interacted with other associated families. This generation of Anderson came out of Long Old Fields (later Forestville).

So, that is what ignited my greater interest in the goings on of D.C., the Surratts, the assassination, the Civil War in general and particularly the forts surrounding D.C. I wish to understand these people better and the best way to do so is through the happenings and history that they had lived through, especially the events nearby or involving them.

The area - D.C., Maryland, Virginia - holds a lot of history for western culture in the Americas. History is even more intriguing when you find your ancestors interacting with it and some well-known characters within that history or seeing them being affected by that history.