Mudd, Surratt and Harbin

[L Verge]

(02-08-2016 03:08 PM)loetar44 Wrote:  Mary Simms also testified that Dr. Mudd and Surratt "never talked very often in the presence of the family; they always went off by themselves to talk ...up stairs in the room." She said that they brought letters from Virginia and that Mudd took these letters and gave them letters to take back to Virginia.

We have never been able to prove that Mudd was a member of the Doctor's Line, a component of the CSA's Secret Line. However, the circumstantial evidence that he maintained a safe house for agents and soldiers and also assisted in the transfer of mail is overwhelming to me.

Don't discount evidence and testimonies given by former slaves; in my opinion, they often knew more about the comings and goings of their masters and the household than members of that household itself. They had their own lines of communication also.

Melvina mentions knowing Andrew Gwynn to be one of the soldiers who frequented their home and woods. He was a brother to Bennett Gwynn of Surrattsville who figures into the Surratt story. Bennett had his plantation, Mount Auburn, raided at night by 200 cavalrymen in search of goods and people heading south early in the war. That is a considerable force of men to ascend on a typical Southern Maryland landowner.

Andrew Jackson Gwynn lived a little over five miles from Bennett -- and about two miles from my hometown of T.B. He was an officer in the Confederate Army, and his distaff side was suspected of running a safe house and mail drop at his plantation, Pleasant Springs. There was a Union training camp nearby, and they spied on the ladies. Rumor had/has it that the Yanks paid one of Andrew's slaves to burn the home in order to end the support of the CSA. The old foundations were still there when I was a child.

Lastly, the Surratts ran a roadside establishment that was about halfway between Dr. Mudd's home and Washington, D.C. It was on the stage line as well as the main north-south route into the capital. I'm pretty sure that the good doctor stopped off and chatted with the Surratts every now and then and was acquainted with them. I also recall that there was a priest from Mudd's Bryantown area that was also familiar with the Surratts. People just plain knew people in Southern Maryland (even as late as 50 years ago) because there were not that many populating the area.

---

I also failed to mention that Booth came with letters of introduction. We know that Dr. William Queen was the one first contacted, and the elderly gentleman put out the call for a meeting at St. Mary's Church to which Dr. Mudd went. James O. Hall, William Tidwell, and Dave Gaddy all thought that there was a letter to Mudd and also one to a Dr. Garland (perhaps of St. Mary's County), but we never could find that doctor.

My point is that, when one of the acknowledged heads of the underground movement called on you to make contacts, you did just that. Hence, Harbin and Surratt get pulled into the "action team" in the fall of 1864.