Letter from Mary Surratt?

[L Verge]

I am very familiar with this letter, and for several years a copy of it hung in the Surratt exhibit area at Surratt House. It is a very brief note to a blotched name that might be "Emma" or "Eliza" or something similar. It basically asks that that person take care of Anna since for some reason she [Mary] must die "today." Then something like "God knows I am innocent..."

The handwriting is different from known samples of Mary's. She wrote with a forehand stroke, this is mainly backhand. Because of the pen and ink of the day - and probably Mary's nerves and weak hands at that time -- there are smears, ink spots, etc. throughout.

The provenance for the note, the original of which I can't remember, was that a Baltimore drunk supposedly had it in his possession and swapped it for a drink in a bar in the early-1900s. Its authenticity just seemed too vague to continue displaying the copy at the museum.

There are a series of letters in Mary's handwriting that still exist - spread out between the Maryland Historical Society, the New York Historical Society, and maybe some still in Pennsylvania. They were written to a priest who had served in the little Catholic church here in Prince George's County that young Mrs. Surratt and another woman had ridden horseback around the area raising funds to build the church.

Fr. Finoti was brought from Italy to serve the church, and from what we can determine, developed a very "strong" relationship with Mary -- to the point where he got transferred to a parish in Boston in the mid-1850s. Mary continued to write to him about the troubles she was having with her husband mainly -- drunkeness, refusing to take her to church, bad influence on the children, etc. At one point, she goes so far as to write, "Bless me father for this may be the last you hear from me. He has threatened to kill me if I do not become what he wishes me to become."

Of course, every modern reader has immediately suspected the prospect of prostitution, but I doubt that was it. Frankly, her letters are whiny and complaining, and I suspect that John Surratt was suggesting that she become a better wife. She was also a Catholic convert who really loved her church. From what we can determine from talking to descendants, John hated the church and never converted.

Anyhow, back in the 1980s, Professor Joseph George, now retired from Villanova University, compiled these Surratt letters into a small booklet for the Maryland Historical Society. He entitled it "A True Childe of Sorrow," because that is how she signed one of the letters. It's a very appropriate phrase - almost a prophecy of what would happen to her.