Travels, Arrest and Trial of John Surratt by Alfred Isacsson

[Pamela]

I have read/skimmed the report online in the Maryland Historical Magazine "John Surratt the the Lincoln Assassination Story" by Alfred Isacsson, who was a Catholic priest and a Mary Surratt apologist. I wonder if your book expands on this report?http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/spe..._1_208.pdf

I came across a couple of interesting bits of information. The first one reveals Father Isacsson's prejudice and John's denial of the facts of the case and still rebellious mindset:

"John Surratt knew very well the injustice dealt to his mother.
His feelings on the affair are best expressed by an incident which
occurred later in his life. When he filled out an application for a
life insurance policy, he stated the cause of his mother's death as
"" murdered by the United States Government."

The second interesting information, that was new to me, anyway was this:

"Sometime between 1870 and 1872, Surratt left Rockville and
secured an appointment as a teacher in Saint Joseph's School,
Emmitsburg, Maryland. At that time the school was held in what
was known as Firemen's Hall, located directly opposite Saint
Joseph's Catholic Church. He rattled his classes and would resort
to physical punishment to maintain discipline. On older boys,
some of them twenty or twenty-one, he used his fists. The younger
boys John would beat with a paddle after he had stretched them
over a special punishment desk which he had designed. " The
Old Bear," as the boys nicknamed him, swore at them in French
when they overstepped the limits of his discipline."

The source for this story was footnoted as,
""Frederic Welty to T. E. Bussey, Philadelphia, November 23, 1938; Thomas E.
Bussey, Memorandum, Baltimore, November 14, 1938. Both in the possession of
Helen J. Campbell, Yorktown, Virginia".

I knew he taught for a while, but hadn't heard about his techniques for discipline. His use of corporal punishment sounds excessive even for those days. John had come a long way from the time at St. Charles when he was a member of the Society of Angels, which, BTW, sounds like the name for the ultimate goody-goody students' club.