Samuel Cox

[L Verge]

A friend just sent me a great human interest story related to Samuel Cox of Booth escape history fame. It was found by a researcher at the Southern Maryland Studies Center/College of Southern Maryland:

I was at SMSC today and came across something about Samuel Cox that I thought you might find interesting. I am going through the ledgers of Dr. Ruel K. Compton. Cox was a patient of Dr. Compton. In 1859, Cox was having trouble with a tooth. Compton visited Cox and pulled the tooth. Compton also pulled a tooth for another person on the farm. The cost for the two extractions was $1.00. Cox paid his bill by giving Dr. Compton 4 pounds of butter. (Four pounds at 25 cents per pound.) Dr. Compton sometimes took "in-kind" payments from those who did not have cash, but the mental picture of an important historical figure like Samuel Cox having a tooth pulled and then handing the doctor four pounds of butter just struck me as funny. I thought you might like to know about it. I think it adds a little "human interest" to the story of Samuel Cox. If you want to check this out it is in ledger #2, page 140. I am still in the process of preparing Dr. Compton's papers and they are not available to the public yet, but if you wanted to stop by some Wednesday when I am there I would be happy to show you.

The Compton family was part of the movers and shakers in Charles County during the 1800s. I believe that Barnes Compton might have been the largest slave holder in the county at the time of the Civil War. The Mudd clan might have been in second place...

I also think Barnes Compton deserves investigation related to the Confederate underground and especially because his home and farm was within a mile or less from King's Creek, where the boat that was supposed to be used to transport the captured Lincoln south was once secreted. Today, water lovers go through Compton's old farm en route to the popular Goose Bay Marina and boat launch. It is also close to Indiantown Farm, the Hughes farm where Booth and Herold ended up on their first attempt to navigate the Potomac.

[richard petersen]

I am not good at math. I just went thru a 8 month process of having a tooth pulled and then a dental implant at a cost of $6,000.
How many pounds of butter would the dentists want for the procedures?

[RJNorton]

Not much is known about Abraham Lincoln's teeth. One of the few times this topic is mentioned in books is the following story. In a letter to Mary Speed (half-sister of Joshua Speed), dated September 27, 1841, Lincoln wrote:

"Do you remember my going to the city while I was in Kentucky, to have a tooth extracted, and making a failure of it? Well, that same old tooth got to paining me so much, that about a week since I had it torn out, bringing with it a bit of the jawbone; the consequence of which is that my mouth is now so sore that I can neither talk, nor eat. I am litterally ‘subsisting on savoury remembrances’—that is, being unable to eat, I am living upon the remembrance of the delicious dishes of peaches and cream we used to have at your house."