Powell's Remains

[BettyO]

Shelton, using clairvoyance, (?!?!!) stated that Lewis Paine and Lewis Powell were TWO different persons - one good, one evil! HA!

[bosox044]

How come they don't relocate his body to Florida? That is where his skull rests next to his mother Caroline

[BettyO]

The rest of Powell's remains is in Rock Creek - most probably in plot # 23 with 1,200 other unclaimed bones - difficult to sort thought. The grave is not marked.

[Dave Taylor]

I used this thread, along with Betty's book, article, and brain, when I was writing my recent post about the Army Medical Museum's connections to Lincoln's assassination. I thought it might be wise to copy over the Lewis Powell part of the post here so that it would be easy for others to find and in one central place.

When Powell Lost his Head
At the same time that John Wilkes Booth was assassinating President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, conspirator Lewis Powell was attacking William Seward, the Secretary of State, in his home.  Powell stabbed and bludgeoned five people in the Secretary's home, but, miraculously, they all survived their brushes with death.  Powell was tried with the other conspirators and executed on July 7, 1865.  His body was immediately buried next to the gallows on the Arsenal Penitentiary grounds.



In 1867, Powell's body was disinterred and reburied in a trench that was dug inside a warehouse on the Aresnal property.  There he was joined by the bodies of fellow conspirators John Wilkes Booth (minus his vetebrae), David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt.  The trench also contained the remains of Andersonville Prison commandant Henry Wirz who had been executed for his wartime crimes in November of 1865.  In the waning hours of Andrew Johnson's presidency in February of 1869, he finally consented to the release of the bodies to their families.  The bodies of Booth, Herold, Surratt, Atzerodt, and Wirz were all claimed and reburied by their families.  Powell's family, who had tried to claim the remains previously and had been denied, were not made aware that they could now take possession of their kin.  For a year, Powell's body remained the only one still buried on the Arsenal grounds.  Finally, in February of 1870, an undertaker named Joseph Gawler (who also handled the reburial of David Herold) took possession of Powell's body and had it buried secretly in one of D.C.'s cemeteries.  1870 newspaper accounts stated that, "family and friends could find his grave by contacting him [Gawler] as he had a record of where he is buried."  The Powell family, who had moved a few times in Florida since Lewis' death, apparently never heard the news.

The location of Powell's remains from 1870 onward is a little fuzzy, but an extremely probable series of events was determined by Lewis Powell's biographer, Betty Ownsbey, in an article she wrote for the October 2012 edition of the Surratt Courier, "And Now - The Rest of the Story: The Search for the Rest of the Remains of Lewis "Paine" Powell".  Using newspaper sources and cemetery records, it appears that Powell was originally interred from the Arsenal into Graceland Cemetery.  At some point between 1870 and 1884 Powell was removed from Graceland and placed in Holmead Cemetery.  Not long after he was placed there, Holmead Cemetery was discontinued and considered  a public health hazard.  The land was alsted to be sold and developed in January of 1885.  Families with the means disinterred their loved ones from Holmead and reburied them elsewhere.  All the unclaimed bodies still left in Holmead were exhumed in December of  1884 and dumped into a mass grave at nearby Rock Creek Cemetery.  Joseph Gawler was one of the undertakers who assisted with this endeavor.  By 1884 it had been almost 20 years since Lewis Powell's death and it must have been very clear to Gawler that no one was coming for the body or was going to pay him for the work he had done keeping track of the body all these years.  More than likely then, Gawler added Lewis Powell's remains to the mass grave at Rock Creek and his body is there today in Section K, Lot 23.


The assumed resting place of Lewis Powell's body, Section K, Lot 23 in D.C.'s Rock Creek Cemetery (approximate location)

While Lewis Powell's body may be at Rock Creek Cemetery, his head definitely isn't.  The conspirators were not embalmed upon their deaths and through their subsequently reburials, their bodies were consistently exposed to oxygen which accelerated their decay.  The connective tissues of Powell's head and neck, likely damaged by his hanging in 1865, would have quickly decomposed away separating his head from the body.  According to newspaper accounts, a few of the conspirator's heads were separated from their bodies when they were disinterred in 1869.  Almost 20 years of decomposition later would have essentially stripped the bone of all tissues.  Therefore, when Joseph Gawler or his associates opened Powell's casket at Holmead in 1884, it would have been a very easy task for them to collect the skull and take it.  That is most likely what occurred for on January 13, 1885, the Army Medical Museum added a new artifact to their collection.  Numbered 2244, the anonymous donation was entered into their catalog as a, "Skull of a white male." A short description followed:

"P. Hung at Washington, D.C., for the attempted assassination of Secretary of State, W. H. Seward, in April, 1865."



The museum, still located inside of Ford's Theatre in 1885, now held the remains of not only the assassin of President Lincoln, but the would be assassin of his Secretary of State.



Unlike John Wilkes Booth's vertebrae and spinal cord, Lewis Powell's skull is no longer in the collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine.  In 1898, the skull was transferred, along with many Native American remains, to the Smithsonian Institution.  For about 94 years the skull sat in storage in the Smithsonian's Anthropology department.  In 1990, the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act became law.  The act required any institutions that accepted federal funding to return Native American cultural items, including remains, to their appropriate tribes.  In adherence to this law, the Smithsonian began the process of going through their collections.  In 1993, a government anthropologist named Stuart Speaker, who had once worked at Ford's Theatre, discovered Lewis Powell's skull among a collection of Native American remains.  Assassination researchers Michael Kauffman, Betty Ownsbey, and James O. Hall were brought in to help identify the remains:


Authors Michael Kauffman and Betty Ownsbey with Lewis Powell's skull

On November 11, 1994, one hundred and twenty-nine years after his death, a part of Lewis Powell was finally buried by his living relatives.  His skull rests today at Geneva Cemetery in Geneva, FL, next to the remains of his mother.

[LincolnMan]

Great post Dave!

[Linda Anderson]

Wonderful post, Dave! You and Betty have done great work explaining the strange journey of Powell's remains. How great that you found Powell's listing in the Army Medical Museum's catalog. It must have been chilling for you to read, “P. Hung at Washington, D.C., for the attempted assassination of Secretary of State, W. H. Seward, in April, 1865.”

I wish that the Powell family knew that they could claim their son's body so that they could give him a decent burial.

[LincolnToddFan]

Fascinating article and incredible photos...thanks everyone!

I feel very sorry for Powell's parents. I can't help it, even though what he(Powell) did was really brutal. If it was my family member I would still want him/her to have a decent burial no matter what they did.

[brtmchl]

Great post Dave. I was wondering where if there are any autographed photos of the one shown above?

[RJNorton]

Terrific post, Dave. Kudos! When Eva visited Florida in April she took several photos of the gravesite and the Geneva Cemetery. To view her photos please go here.