President's Day-Presentation for Senior Citizens

[HerbS]

Today was the Best of the Senior Citizen Presentations thus far.Over 50 people turned out.Grandparents brought thier grandchildren.A 97yr old retired-Sister of St.Joseph came from the The Mother House and stayed after to tell me,"I always thought those Jesuits were involved."Another lady grew up in the DC.area and remembered women dressed in Black to go to Oxin Hill Cemetary in rememberance of Mary Surratt.She has been to The Surratt House and claims to have met Laurie.Then her husband shows me a doccument signed by Lincoln!History comes alive at any age!

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Correction----It was Mt.Olivet Cemetary!

[L Verge]

What a great experience, Herb. Did you tell the Sister that a lot of people in 1865 thought the Jesuits had something to do with it also? The Jesuits were very significant in Maryland, and some historians blame the Maryland planters for conceiving the plot.

BTW: I hope that some of the "ladies in black" also visited the cemetery in Oxon Hill, Maryland where Mrs. Surratt's mother is buried. She is in the graveyard of St. Ignatius Catholic Church. In the 1840s, Mrs. Surratt and a friend rode horseback through the area to collect funds to construct what was then a simple log church (it is still a simple, wooden church). Its first priest was a Fr. Finotti, with whom Mrs. Surratt developed a deep friendship (gossip mongers then and now say it was a tad more). The priest was sent to Boston, but he and Mrs. Surratt maintained correspondence over the years. Those letters give us an inkling of her unhappy marriage to a man with a drinking problem who put himself deeply in debt.

Mrs. Bessie Jenkins, Mary's mother, outlived her daughter by thirteen years. She continued to live on her elder son's farm near Clinton (now part of Joint Base Andrews) until her death in 1878. There is no evidence that we have found that she ever spoke publicly about her daughter's involvement with Booth or her fate. Likewise, there is no evidence that she ever visited Mary in the penitentiary.

A great niece of Mrs. Surratt was a friend of my mother. She always referred to Mrs. Surratt as Aunt Lizzie - not Aunt Mary. Her 1840 marriage license is signed "M. Elizabeth Jenkins." I refuse to make reference to Lizzie Borden at this point...