Does anyone know if the Lucas cabin still stands? I seem to recall it was when I took the tour a few years ago.
Thanks
Mike
As far as I know - the Lucas cabin is long gone -
We have done the Surratt bus tours over the escape route since 1977, and there was no sign of it that far back. I believe that James O. Hall talked with some old-timers in the area in the 1950s or 60s, and they were able to give him an approximate location - which would place it very close to the modern-day entrance into the development that now surrounds Cleydael.
That entrance is not the original one even to the 1970s. Technically, we approach from the rear of the house. In the 1970s, there was a private lane that turned off the main road a few hundred yards past the modern entrance. It was so narrow that our bus could not make it all the way in. We hoofed it from a certain wide oak tree.
Lucas Cabin is indeed long gone.
Ok, what was the Lucas cabin?
A slave cabin Booth and Herold stayed in on their escape. Much to the chagrin of the slaves.
(02-14-2013 08:33 AM)J. Beckert Wrote: [ -> ]A slave cabin Booth and Herold stayed in on their escape. Much to the chagrin of the slaves.
More like horror. Lucas says he has no business hosting a white man, to which JWB pulls out his Rio Grand Camp Knife and tells him, we're staying and you're sleeping outside.
Ok, now I remember the event. Somehow "Lucas cabin" didn't register with me. Thanks!
(02-14-2013 08:46 AM)Jim Garrett Wrote: [ -> ] (02-14-2013 08:33 AM)J. Beckert Wrote: [ -> ]A slave cabin Booth and Herold stayed in on their escape. Much to the chagrin of the slaves.
More like horror. Lucas says he has no business hosting a white man, to which JWB pulls out his Rio Grand Camp Knife and tells him, we're staying and you're sleeping outside.
That was horrible how they treated that family.
At that point, Booth had been turned away by three, very highly placed members of society in the Northern Neck of Virginia. He was in no mood to be forced to sleep in a slave cabin. Frankly, that would have been a supreme insult to any white man in the 1860s - whether they be from North, South, East, or West.
It seems like I remember reading that Mr. Lucas told them that his wife had been sick also, making it that much worse. I'm not sure about that though.
I have never found anyone who could pin-point the Cabin. I've read that it was "nearby" and "on the Cleydael property". I've heard that it was across the road, from the entrance that Laurie described. I've seen a picture of "a" cabin, said to be the Lucas Cabin, but the pic had no trees showing. The pic was taken from below the level of the cabin, so that you are looking up at it and it is all sky behind the cabin. Slave cabins were not shown on any available map of the period. The road there is not the same road that was in use in that era. (would you believe -I have not quit looking?)
I believe Mike Kauffman know/knew where the cabin stood.
You are right Jim. Mike has a picture of it in In the Footsteps of an Assassin. He locates the cabin near the intersection of Cleydael Blvd and Route 296.
I believe Betty Owensby remembers visiting with the Lucas family sometime arounf the turn of the century. She and Charley would race their wagons up and down the road to Port Conway!
