Grave of John Wilkes Booth

[L Verge]

(01-21-2017 03:26 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Thanks, Laurie - very interesting. I've never actually seen such practiced. In any case sounds a fun endeavor especially with such catering provided. Those sandwiches sound like "toast Hawaii", an absolute party must-have in the1950s:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toast_Hawaii

Mr. Brennan's pineapple sandwiches would have been a bit more tasty with the ham and cheese and marachino cherry!

I forgot to add that the dowsing rods could also (supposedly) identify the sex of the grave occupant by crossing each other when encountering a "female grave." Don't laugh, but I held those rods and walked through cemeteries and still cannot explain what caused them to move - and to be accurate a lot of times.

I believe that Mr. Brennan dowsed for the grave of Edman Spangler when Mike Kauffman suggested that the Surratt Society and the Mudd Society join in a project to re-mark his grave. Dr. Richard Mudd vaguely remembered the section of the old St. Peter's Church graveyard where there had been a simple, wooden cross marking his grave.

In the 1950s, however, the cemetery was very grown over and pretty much abandoned. A local man was hired to clean it up and decided to do so with heavy equipment. In the process, existing stones were damaged and others shoved over into the nearby woods. Spangler's was no doubt either long gone or destroyed at that point.

The dowsing rods may have been used to locate the grave in the region where it was remembered to have been marked. In any case, that's where the monument is now placed.

That was the first of the tombstones that the Surratt Society replaced. Years later, Rich Smyth of this forum was able to confirm the "new" location of Elizabeth Keckly's reburial, and the Society raised the funds for an impressive stone. Within the past decade, the Society has also marked the grave of Mrs. Surratt's lawyer, Frederick Aiken.