Food for Thought

[L Verge]

(08-18-2019 02:36 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(08-18-2019 02:00 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Unlikely. First, she left after 2 pm that Friday for a trip that would take close to two hours to get to Surrattsville, and the county seat trip would have taken about another hour. When would the court house close?

Very interesting, Laurie. Is it known what her plan of travel was had Weichmann not been released from work early? Would she have even departed Washington at all? As far as I know, she would not have been aware beforehand that Weichmann was coming home hours earlier than normal.

I would ask the same question also, Roger. I do not believe that she knew Weichmann would have the afternoon off, and I don't understand how Booth thought she could get the package to Surrattsville without a driver.

Also, it was now 1865, and the land deal that both her husband and she had defaulted on with the Calvert family had been going on since at least 1853 (land purchased in 1852 on a promissory note, just like our modern mortgages). How urgent was it that the package get to the tavern that day -- unless Booth told Mary what was going down that night.

And again, how did he expect her to get it there? I will concede that most Southern Maryland farm women (and others all over the nation) were pretty good at managing horses as well as buggies. If this was a critical mission, I suspect that Mary could have handled herself well.