Food for Thought

[L Verge]

In an attempt to get this thread back on track to the Civil War era: There were two Sydney Emanuel Mudds, but neither held a doctorate degree of any sort that I can find, and both served distinguished positions in state and national governments. Sydney Emanuel Mudd (the elder) was the son of Jeremiah Mudd, and it was he who married into the Griffin family near Surrattsville, whose old home brought this subject up. He and Mary Ida Griffin Mudd then became the parents of Sydney Emanuel Mudd II.

Walter Griffin's name might be familar to those who have delved into the Confederate underground in Southern Maryland as well as the 1865 trial, because he is mentioned as a possible secessionist and also appears in some of Herold's material on folks in the area that he was familiar with as hunting and fishing companions of Herold's father and him.

To make the Confederate angle even better in the family, Walter Griffin married Eleanor Bryan -- as in the Bryans of Piscataway district and Surrattsville and related to Edward Pliny Bryan, who became a valued member of the Confederacy under Gen. Lee and then sent to Beauregard because he was so good at mining harbors. He was in the process of doing that in Charleston when he contracted yellow fever and died in that city. Researchers have yet to identify his burial place in Charleston.

The Griffin side of this is buried in the samll, largely-unknown cemetery behind St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Surrattsville/Clinton. The Mudd side went back to Charles County to be buried in St. Ignatius Catholic Church Cemetery outside of Port Tobacco (which is rich in Civil War history as well as the history of the Catholic Church in America).