A Weird Coincidence?

[L Verge]

(12-10-2015 05:07 PM)mgambuzza Wrote:  

(12-07-2015 06:56 AM)BettyO Wrote:  An interesting observation on an 1861 Map of Southern Maryland (Prince Georges County) where one of the Surratt's nearest neighbors is listed as "L. Paine?!?!"

Interesting that there is also a town nearby named "Jenkins" which was Mary Surrats Maiden name.

The town was about two miles north of Surratt House, and was more an intersection of several colonial and 1800s roads that came together at the farm where Mary's brother's family and her mother resided up through the early-1900s.

Old timers still call that intersection Jenkins Corner. In the mid-1900s, there were more roads added to the intersection, and we began to call it Malfunction Junction. It has now had some overpasses and merges added, so we have discontinued the nicknames.

The Jenkins' farm was actually near a little village called Waterloo - less than a quarter-mile from the Corner. It was one of about five little villages that got swallowed up into one big complex known as Joint Base Andrews (used to be Andrews AFB) during WWII. This is where Mary Jenkins Surratt was born (on what is now a golf course and enlisted housing).

Surratt descendants have told us about a Jenkins' graveyard that was evidently destroyed at that time (base historian denies it). The descendants think that Mary's husband was buried in that family plot since he hated the Catholic church and refused to convert.

I talked with the base historian back in the 1970s, and he had been at the base during the construction years. He told me that they encountered several graveyards and moved every grave that they found to a little Methodist cemetery on base where the village of Meadows had been, unless they could find descendants who wanted the bodies reinterred elsewhere. Since Mary converted her whole family (except the youngest brother) to Catholicism, they are buried in Catholic cemeteries. Whether John Surratt, Sr. ever had a marker is unlikely, given that he left $3500 in debts to his wife when he died in 1862...