Mary Surratt

Mary Surratt, born in Maryland in the 1820s, was a prominent boarding house owner in Washington, D.C. She was deeply involved in the events surrounding the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, a crime for which she was ultimately convicted. Surratt maintained her innocence throughout her life, and her trial remains a subject of controversy.

Raised in a Catholic household, Surratt converted to Catholicism at a young age and remained a devout practitioner. In 1840, she married John Harrison Surratt, with whom she had three children. Following her husband's death in 1862, she took over the management of his estate and later moved to Washington, D.C., where she transformed her townhouse into a boarding house.

It was in this boarding house that Surratt became acquainted with John Wilkes Booth, the man who would assassinate Lincoln. Booth, along with his co-conspirators George Atzerodt and Lewis Powell, frequented her establishment. Just prior to the assassination, Booth entrusted Surratt with a package intended for one of her tenants, John M. Lloyd.

After Lincoln's assassination, Surratt was arrested and tried by a military tribunal. The prosecution relied heavily on testimonies from Lloyd and Louis J. Weichmann, who detailed her connections to Booth. Despite the pleas for clemency from five of the nine judges, citing her age and gender, President Andrew Johnson denied her request. On July 7, 1865, Surratt was hanged, becoming the first woman executed by the U.S. federal government, and she was later interred at Mount Olivet Cemetery.