Where was John Surratt on April 14, 1865 ?

[Susan Higginbotham]

(03-22-2017 07:30 PM)L Verge Wrote:  

(03-22-2017 06:40 PM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  

(03-22-2017 05:45 PM)loetar44 Wrote:  

(03-22-2017 05:13 PM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  The reward poster doesn't mention a goatee:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c...poster.jpg

I once read that the photo which was used for the reward poster was found in Mary Surratt's boarding house and that it was actually a photo of Isaac, not John.

In his book Weichmann wrote that it was he who persuaded Mrs. Surratt to give a photograph of John to the authorities. He would have certainly known whether or not it was a photograph of John.

In the 1970s, when we were young and eager, Joan Chaconas and I spent one day at the Library of Congress going over photographic collections. I was looking for a photo of my family's home (as it appeared ca. 1875) that had been used at Surrattsville High School way back in the 1960s when they put on the play about Mary Surratt.

Never found that photo, but we did find the standing Surratt photo used on the reward posters. However, that photo at the LOC was distinctly labeled as being Isaac Surratt, not John. In the 1980s, Msgr Robert Keesler found that same photo in CDV form in a flea market in Baltimore. On the back was written John Surratt.

We know of only one other photo of Isaac. In it, he appears to be in his early 40s, and the photo was used with his obituary in 1907. To this day, I still think the LOC was right. In a letter to his cousin, John once wrote that Isaac was the only one of the children who looked like "Ma."

Both Anna and John appear paler and somewhat fragile to me in other photos. The one that I think is Isaac looks like he could fight for the Confederate Army and also grow older and muscular like the Isaac in the obituary photo. He definitely was the better-looking of the two sons.

Is there an outside chance that Weichmann lied about the photo being of John in order to throw the authorities off track?

Weichmann, who saw Isaac for the first time at John Surratt's trial, described him as a "dark, thickset, powerfully built man, unlike any of the rest of the family."

In his book, Weichmann said that at the time he procured John's photograph, he believed John to be innocent of any crime and hoped that the photo would prove that he was not Seward's then-unidentified assailant.