Mary Victorine Hunter Surratt

[L Verge]

(09-25-2018 05:52 PM)Dennis Urban Wrote:  Just completed reading the 2016 book by Frederick Hatch, John Surratt Rebel, Lincoln Conspirator, Fugitive. It is well-researched and fills in a lot of blanks. Well worth the time. As usual there is some conflicting information from various sources but many questions were answered for me.

I can answer some of the questions in this short thread. F. Scott Fitzgerald is buried in St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Rockville, adjacent to the church. John attended St. Mary's when he lived in the Rockville area of Montgomery County from "about 1870-1875" per Hatch. Two of John's children were baptized from that church. John Jr. met Mary Victorine Hunter while he in Montgomery County. They were married in May 1872. Hatch says Mary V grew up in upper Montgomery County.

Later, their daughter Mary Victorine Surratt (1818-1962) married Parker Weller in 1911. Their son was Louis Parker Weller, mentioned above. At some point, Parker and Mary moved to Frederick County, MD (perhaps in Barddock Heights) where they both died; he in 1958, she in 1962. They are buried with other family in the Monocacy Cemetery, Bealesville, MD.

Bealesville is directly north on Poolesville and south of Barnesville, MD; roughly 15 miles northwest of Rockville. This is still a very rural area of upper Montgomery County and may have been close to the home area of Mary Victorine Hunter Surratt.

John Harrison Surratt Jr had many grandchildren even though two of his daughters never married. The line is no doubt still going strong though with many different surnames. If John Jr had not burned the manuscript he wrote later in life (attribution to Hatch), we might have some additional answers. However, John Jr was not always prone to truthfulness.

I have met a number of Surratt descendants through both Anna's line and John, Jr's. All were/are very nice people. I believe that Louis Parker Weller was one of the descendants who cut the ribbon to open Surratt House in 1976. Another descendant, Thelma Key Surratt, helped me put together a Surratt family reunion back in the late-70s, and yet another, Helen Surratt Heisler, wife of the publisher of the Baltimore New American, was a Life Member of the Surratt Society.

On the Anna Surratt Tonry side, one of her grandsons visited and told us about her long struggle with nerves that destroyed her kidney functions. He also told us that Anna watched a favorite servant drying her hair by the fire when a stray ember caught her hair on fire. She burned to death in front of Anna - something that she never got over. His father attended Anna at the last.

Another part of the Tonrys donated some of Anna's personal belongings to the museum. One item is a hair bracelet that I would like to think was made from the hair of Mary Surratt - hopefully before all of the "unpleasantness."