Where was John Surratt on April 14, 1865 ?

[L Verge]

(08-17-2018 08:45 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Way back in the early days of the Surratt Courier (which started in 1976), we carried several articles discussing the validity of the Hanson Hiss stories. Many folks doubt the veracity of his so-called interview with Surratt done 30+ years after the assassination. I think the Hiss interview will continue to be one of those "questionable" aspects about the event and young Surratt's role in it.

In the previous post here, I should have mentioned that the spurious Hanson Hiss article of 1889 is generally repetitious of a previous article that ran in the Philadelphia Times on October 4, 1885. That article was supposedly done by an unnamed correspondent who termed himself only as "Pilgrim" and may have been from Baltimore. In his memoirs (not published until the 20th century), Weichmann inconspicuously mentions the Pilgrim interview.

Pilgrim claimed to have conducted the first interview of John H. Surratt. Most historians as well as Surratt family members are of the opinion that no such interview occurred. When Hanson Hill published his article four years later, it almost smacked of plagiarism in that it was so much like the Pilgrim interview.

The Surratt Courier published the Pilgrim interview in the July 1981 issue. At that time, it was transcribed from aged microfilm in the holdings of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in Harrisburg. It was the only existing copy known to still exist.