The Mudd family, David Herold and the Sothorons.

[Laurie Verge]

I sure do!

Col. John Henry Sothoron is a relative through my paternal grandfather. His mother was Elizabeth Sothoron Smith Locke Braddock Burroughs. Therefore, my great-grandmother was related to Col. Sothoron (a cousin of some sort) and lived with the family for awhile as a child on their plantation named The Plains. The family story is that she was so isolated there that she married a Mr. Braddock of Montgomery County, Maryland, at age 15 to escape.

When Mr. Braddock died, she was living on Locke's Hill Road near Mechanicsville in St. Mary's County. She reprimanded a slave, who retaliated by setting fire to the house. Men from Mechanicsville rushed to help her, and she met and married my great-grandfather Leonard Burroughs. My grandfather was born in 1868, and married into the Huntt family of T.B. in 1899. As for "Peanut John," Kauffman is the first author that I know of to have speculated that the name was actually spelled "Borrows." He bases this on a doctor named that who lived near Ford's Theatre.

The story of the Sothorons, The Plains, and the run-in with the Union and Lt. Eben White as a result of the more radical Second Confiscation Act will be part of an exhibit that is in the final stages of production for Surratt House Museum and will open on Feb. 1. It is entitled Between the Lines: Southern Maryland in the Civil War.

The exhibit will also include a brief story on Mrs. Braddock/Burroughs's oldest child, Charles, who ran away from Charlotte Hall School to join the Confederate Army and never returned. We never found out what happened to him until the 1970s, when the wonderful James O. Hall searched for him as a favor to me and found that he died in the last days of the war in the fighting around the Weldon Railroad.

Now - David Herold did not attend Charlotte Hall, despite what a few authors have contended. He was educated in D.C. at Rittenhouse Academy and Georgetown College. John Stanton will also disagree with me on the patrol that clashed with Union forces near Mechanicsville on April 15, because he cannot find a record of a Lt. Garland Smith, who was supposedly in charge of the Mosby men. Gen. William Tidwell agreed with me, however.

I know of no links to the Mudds with the Sothorons, but a daughter of Col. Sothoron married Barnes Compton of Charles County, and it was this political figure of the day who wrote to then-President Andrew Johnson seeking to have The Plains returned to the Sothoron family. They did regain it in the spring of 1866.

After being found not guilty of manslaughter, Col. Sothoron filed a claim against the U.S. government for almost $100,000 for losses and damages to his plantation. The government had plundered the estate and sold off crops, furniture, cattle, farm equipment, and more. They had also used the buildings to house contraband (runaway and newly freed slaves coming across from Virginia). The land had been used as a government farm to produce supplies for the Union army. The Sothorons' claim was finally rejected in 1875.

Anna Cecelia Mudd Blandford is the Mudd sister that I mentioned in an earlier posting about being married to Dr. Blandford and past whose home Booth and Herold rode en route to T.B. on the night of the assassination. I have often wondered why Booth did not receive assistance from Dr. Blandford except for the fact that the home was very close to the road and only about three miles past Surrattsville - too close to the city and not isolated enough and Dr. Sam already knew Booth.

The tournaments were grand events in Southern Maryland, even when I was a child. Anyone and everyone attended, so it is likely that the Mudds and the Sothorons knew each other. They were certainly rooting for the same side during the Civil War.

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I should have also added that Barnes Compton owned a great deal of land near Port Tobacco, one parcel of which was within a mile of where the original kidnap scheme called for the large, flat-bottomed boat owned by Smoot and Brawner was to be waiting at King's Creek.