Mary Surratt's Decision

[L Verge]

First, Paige is absolutely correct that the Surratts had owned the H Street house since 1853 - acquiring it through a complicated deal arranged between her husband and the original owner (Gibson?) which solved some of both men's financial problems. During the decade between 1853 and her moving there in the late-fall of 1864, the Surratts had rented the house to various employees of the nearby Patent Office, a piano teacher, etc.

Over the years, a few erstwhile researchers have attempted to claim that Booth bought the house for Mrs. Surratt and installed her there because of its fairly close proximity to Ford's Theatre. Let's just say that they weren't very good researchers.

As for Paige's questions, a saving grace for Mrs. Surratt might have been if she had been able to recoup payments that John Nothey owed her husband's estate - sufficient enough to pay off the longstanding debt to the Calverts for the original purchase of the 200+ acres in 1852. I think that would have been merely a stop-gap measure to her economic problems, however.

What had been 287 1/2 acres of the farm had dwindled under her husband's ownership. Every time he sold land to pay a debt, he was selling tobacco land that, cultivated properly, should have returned him a profit throughout the 1850s. He was also selling off lands closer to D.C. that he had inherited from his foster parents.

Cultivation of that land also was dependent upon slave labor until November 1, 1864, when Maryland's new state constitution went into effect and freed the remaining Surratt slaves. By that time, her older son had been in Texas with the Confederate Army for three years, and her younger son was running up and down the eastern seaboard on his various underground activities for the CSA. That left no white male laborers unless she could find some sharecroppers or tenant farmers. While the war was going on, the white labor force in Southern Maryland was pretty scarce.

Another big issue for Mrs. Surratt was the fact that the farm was fairly isolated except for being along a well-traveled road. Renegades and other bad sorts traveled that road as well as respectable people, however. Mrs. Surratt and Anna were single women with little protection. The H Street home was in a good part of Washington City with close neighbors. There was enough space to take in boarders, and running a boardinghouse was a perfectly respectable profession for a middle-class lady of the day. The city home also put her in close proximity with several Catholic churches, and her religion was a very important part of her life.

Finally, I think she also was thinking of Anna's future. Being tied to a barren country farm left few prospects for a worthy husband, and Anna had been well-educated and deserved better than what fate had handed Mary.