Posts Tagged With: Thomas Jones
The Lincoln Assassination On This Day (September 27 – October 3)
Posted on October 3, 2021 by Dave Taylor
Taking inspiration from one of my favorite books, John Wilkes Booth: Day by Day by Art Loux, I'm documenting a different Lincoln assassination or Booth family event each day on my Twitter account. In addition to my daily #OTD (On This Day) tweets, each Sunday I'll be posting them here for the past week. If you click on any of the pictures in the tweet, it will take you to its individual tweet page on Twitter where you can click to make the images larger and easier to see. Since Twitter limits the number of characters you can type in a tweet, I often include text boxes as pictures to provide more information. I hope you enjoy reading about the different events that happened over the last week.
#OTD Sept. 27, 1864: #JohnWilkesBooth was getting ready to leave Franklin, Pennsylvania for the last time & began the process of closing out his investments in the oil region. JWB had lost about $6,000 in failed oil ventures as was later testified to by his agent, Joseph Simonds. pic.twitter.com/eqNgJhLajb
— Dave Taylor (@LinConspirators) September 27, 2021
#OTD Sept. 28, 1858: #MarySurratt wrote a letter to Father Joseph Finotti seeking his help to find a school to send her son, #JohnSurratt. Mary's husband had grown increasingly alcoholic & abusive which motivated her to get her children away from their home in Surrattsville. pic.twitter.com/Qp36jmC1CF
Also #OTD Sept. 28, 1886: #EdwinBooth, on tour in Minnesota, took a sight-seeing visit to Minnehaha Falls with members of his acting troupe. Edwin bought his companions souvenir canoes and baskets as mementoes of the visit. pic.twitter.com/PxGFEf5wZ0
#OTD Sept. 29, 1914: D. Eldridge Monroe died at 69. He testified for #DrMudd's defense that he heard on April 15 that it was #EdwinBooth, not #JohnWilkesBooth, who assassinated Lincoln. Years later, Monroe, a 61 year old widower, married Mudd's daughter Nettie Mudd who was 28. pic.twitter.com/JILV99tHov
#OTD Sept. 30, 1865: Rev. George Powell, the father of executed conspirator #LewisPowell, wrote to his son's attorney, William Doster. Lewis had been so tight lipped about his past that by the time he opened up to Doster & his father was summoned to D.C., Lewis was already dead. pic.twitter.com/QRHTHPs1qm
#OTD Oct. 1, 1867: The bodies of #JohnWilkesBooth, #DavidHerold, #GeorgeAtzerodt, #LewisPowell, #MarySurratt & Henry Wirz were disinterred, moved, and reburied at Warehouse No. 1 at the Old Arsenal Penitentiary. Their bodies would not be released to their families until 1869. pic.twitter.com/DPTDmm5rBS
— Dave Taylor (@LinConspirators) October 1, 2021
#OTD Oct. 2, 1820, Thomas A. Jones was born near Port Tobacco, Maryland. After the assassination, Jones hid #JohnWilkesBooth & #DavidHerold in a pine thicket before providing them with a boat & sending them towards Virginia. Though offered $100,000, Jones refused to give them up. pic.twitter.com/0Qx3fEsjl0
Thomas Jones' home of Huckleberry, which the trio passed as they travelled from the Pine Thicket to the banks of th… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Dave Taylor (@LinConspirators) October 02, 2021
#OTD Oct. 3, 1977: The @FBI Laboratory transmitted their report on #JohnWilkesBooth's diary to the NPS. After examining & photographing the diary under different settings, the FBI found no "invisible writings, unusual obliterations or alterations". pic.twitter.com/kBErK3wcZV
The reason the FBI examined JWB's diary was due spurious claims being made by a 1977 book & movie, The Lincoln Cons… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Here are a few other tweets from this week that I thought might interest folks.
The rocking chair in which Lincoln was sitting when he was shot is on permanent display at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Henry Ford purchased the chair for $2,400 in 1929. https://t.co/eXNpPCeOmK pic.twitter.com/dzbSppTveq
— Presidential Trivia (@triviapotus) September 27, 2021
The prison hoods worn by the accused conspirators of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln 🇺🇸.#POTUS pic.twitter.com/tFqWpj6U2G
— Presidential Wisdom (@PrezWisdom) September 27, 2021
When Ford's Theatre was restored to its 1865 appearance in the mid-1960s, the restoration replicated Civil War-era theatrical rigging. As you can see, this proved quite cumbersome and was later replaced by 20th Century technology. #FordsTheatre #LincolnLegacy pic.twitter.com/sZCFdx8kGr
— Ford's Theatre (@fordstheatre) September 29, 2021
Thought not mentioned by name in this article, Lettie Hall was the woman enslaved by #DrMudd who is associated with this church. Lettie made #JohnWilkesBooth breakfast on the morning of April 15, 1865.
SRU Exploring Moving Historic Shiloh Church To Campus https://t.co/ojoRJpKSmk
This sold for $275,000, the highest price yet for one of these wanted posters. antiquesandthearts.com/100000-wilkes-…
On the first Friday of the month, the National Archives hosts an #ArchivesHashtagParty on Twitter. They encourage other archives and museums to tweet out pieces in their collection based around a different theme. This month's theme was #ArchivesArt. Even though I'm not an archive, I sometimes take part in the fun showing off things in different collections.
Today's #ArchivesHashtagParty is #ArchivesArt! In the collection of the @ALPLM is this ornate mourning fan with painted vignettes of the assassination of #Lincoln & #JohnWilkesBooth's unsuccessful escape. pic.twitter.com/a0OxdzLh5P
In the collection of @theValentineRVA are several copies of a bust of #EdwinBooth. On Oct. 2, 1858, Edwin sat for this bust by sculptor Edward Valentine. Edwin was performing in Richmond alongside his brother, #JohnWilkesBooth, who was a part of the stock company. #ArchivesArt pic.twitter.com/vixmsJGv2c
Sarah Dyer Mudd, the future wife of #DrMudd, painted this picture of "The Sleeping Beauty" in 1853 when she was a student. It is on display in the same room #JohnWilkesBooth slept in at the @DrMuddHouse. #ArchivesArt pic.twitter.com/nEzOumzLAz
While I don't know the location of this amazing folk painting of conspirator #MichaelOLaughlen shooting lasers out of his eyes, the @artbma does have an album quilt in their collection with a square made by ol' Cyclops himself. #ArchivesArt pic.twitter.com/koPXgHXEBg
The collection of @FolgerResearch is really phenomenal. Here are two incredibly detailed artistic depictions of #EdwinBooth in his most famous role of Hamlet. The detail on Edwin's face is really very accurate. #ArchivesArt pic.twitter.com/vITRq3EAmS
That brings us up to today. Next Sunday I'll write another post covering the #OTD tweets from this coming week. If you don't want to wait until then and want to know each anniversary on the day it happens, follow me on Twitter! My username is @LinConspirators (Twitter has a character limit not only for tweets, but for usernames as well so I had to condense it). Even if you don't want to join Twitter, you can still see my tweets by just visiting my Twitter page on the web. You can also see my tweets by looking at the sidebar of this website if you're using a desktop or laptop computer, or at the bottom if you are visiting on a mobile device.
Until next week!
Categories: History, OTD	| Tags: Booth Family, Conspiracy, Dr. Samuel Mudd, Edwin Booth, Execution, Ford's Theatre, john Surratt, John Wilkes Booth, Lewis Powell, Mary Surratt, Michael O'Laughlen, Museums, Oil, Relics, Thomas Jones	| 2 Comments
Tracing the Letters from John Wilkes Booth to Samuel Williams O'Laughlen
The earliest known writings of John Wilkes Booth consist of a series of letters he wrote in 1854 and 1855 when he was 16 and 17 years old. The recipient of these letters was Samuel Williams "Billy" O'Laughlen. Billy O'Laughlen was the elder brother of Michael O'Laughlen who would later join Booth in his plot to abduct President Lincoln. John Wilkes Booth had met the O'Laughlen brothers after his father, Junius Brutus Booth, bought a house on Exeter Street in Baltimore in 1845. The purchase of this house was to appease Junius' wife, Mary Ann Booth, who felt increasingly isolated at their Harford County farm year after year. Since 1840, the family had rented different homes in Baltimore during the cooler months and Mary Ann also found the schools in the bustling metropolis a better place to educate her growing children. The family still travelled back to their farm, especially during the warm summers and it was during these visits to Tudor Hall that a teenage John Wilkes Booth would write to his companion back in Baltimore. A total of eight letters from Booth to Billy O'Laughlen have survived through the years with a few of them having resurfaced in recent auctions.
In preparation for one of my upcoming daily tweets, I decided to devote September 14 to one of the letters Booth wrote to Billy O'Laughlen on that date in 1855. I am much indebted to the 1997 book by John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper called, "Right or Wrong, God Judge Me" The Writings of John Wilkes Booth. In this edited volume, Rhodehamel and Taper transcribed a large percentage of John Wilkes Booth's letters to friends and family, including the known O'Laughlen letters. From their work we know the text of Booth's letter:
Tudor Hall. Sept: 14th: 1855.
My Dear Friend,
I received you letter the other day. I thought you did not intend to write to me, by your delaying it so long. I should have written long ago but I was waitting till I heard from you. I tried to see you on the night of my debut. I saw Welch (I believe you know him) he said he would tell you to come out, but I expect he never did it. I am doing very well up here, but I am getting very tired of the country. I am thinking of moveing to Sebasterpol you know there is some excitement there. and yet the country has been lively lately and next week there are two pick-nicks going on. and on the 25 there is a very large ball to be held in Bel-Air, and there are Plenty of Pigeons, Patriges and Sqrirrels for shooting. we are thinking of moveing to Baltimore in the winter but are not certain. I will be in Baltimore anyhow in October if nothing happens. you must excuse this dull letter, but I feel very low spirited to day. Answer soon and try to write me a long letter. Give my respects to all who ask after me your Ever Affectionate Friend,
J. W. Booth
In this letter, Booth refers to his debut, which was the first time he took the stage in a professional manner. This occurred on August 14, 1855 where he played the role of Richmond from Richard III at Baltimore's St. Charles Theatre. The performance was a benefit for his childhood acquaintance (and future brother-in-law) John Sleeper Clarke, who knew the Booth name would help draw in curious theatregoers and increase his box office proceeds. The mention of moving to the excitement in "Sebasterpol" is a reference to Siege of Sevastopol, a yearlong conflict in the Crimean War. Just a few days before Booth wrote this letter, Russian defenses had abandoned Sevastopol after heavy bombardment and massive casualties were inflicted on them by the Allies. The fall of Sevastopol essentially marked the beginning of the end of the Crimean War for the Russians. Booth's desire to be part of something exciting and historic would be realized four years later when he left his acting career in Richmond to go and serve as a guard at John Brown's execution.
Always hoping to see the original, handwritten copies of John Wilkes Booth correspondences, I did a little searching to see if this September 14, 1855 letter had been sold at auction lately. While some of the other letters to O'Laughlen have been sold, it does not appear that this one has resurfaced publicly in the last couple decades so I could not find the handwritten version. Still, I was curious where these O'Laughlen letters came from in the first place.
In Rhodehamel and Taper's book, they state that, "Around 1965, a Baltimore woman cleaning out a desk in her basement suddenly realized that the old letters she was burning were signed, 'J. Wilkes Booth.'" Digging a bit future we find a newspaper article from the New York Post dated November 2, 1966 entitled "Lincoln & Booth Letters: Evil Will Outsell the Good" which describes an auction set for the next day by auctioneer Charles Hamilton.
Among the many treasures Hamilton was set to auction was a letter Lincoln wrote after this third Lincoln-Douglas debate in 1858 and three of the letters Booth wrote to O'Laughlen, including the September 14, 1855 one. As the name of the article implies, Hamilton gave his opinion that the Booth letters would sell for more than the Lincoln letter. "Evil is unfortunately always fascinating," the auctioneer noted. "If you go to a zoo, you're fascinated by cobras and rattlesnakes. If you have a choice of two books to read, you'd probably prefer 'The Life and Cruel Deeds of Jesse James' to a volume of sermons…I dislike the thought of a Presidential murderer's letters being worth more than those of the President himself, but that's what happens." At the conclusion of the article, there is a brief mention of where Hamilton acquired the Booth material proving a little more context than Rhodehamel and Taper provided:
"The John Wilkes Booth letter came to Hamilton from Mrs. Agatha McCarthy, an elderly widow who discovered an old desk in the basement of her Baltimore home, which she said was 'just full of Booth.' She burned many of the old letters she found, before she recognized the bold signature: ' J. Wilkes Booth.' Her home was owned previously by Thomas Jones, a co-conspirator with Booth in the Lincoln assassination, and somehow Booth's old writing desk had resided for years in McCarthy's basement."
Now this entire explanation perplexed me. These are letters written by Booth to Billy O'Laughlen when he was a teenager. According to this article they were found by a woman in the basement of her home that used to be owned by Thomas Jones, the Southern Marylander who took care of Booth and Herold when they were hiding in a pine thicket during their escape. The mixture of these disparate figures into one story felt off to me. In addition, the article suggests that the desk in which the letters were found in Mrs. McCarthy's basement was Booth's writing desk. We are to believe that letters a young Booth mailed to Billy O'Laughlen somehow made their way back to Booth's own writing desk and then into the hands of Thomas Jones in Baltimore.
To be fair, Thomas Jones did live in Baltimore after the Civil War. He can be found living there in the 1870 and 1880 censuses with his family. Jones was still living there in 1883/1884 when he was visited by journalist George Alfred Townsend (GATH) who interviewed him about his involvement in Booth's escape. That interview resulted in the article "How Wilkes Booth Crossed the Potomac", filling in the missing timeline in Booth's escape.
So I decided to try and track down where, exactly, Thomas Jones resided while living in Baltimore. I used census records, Baltimore directories, and even the addresses on GATH's telegrams to Jones, to plot the different places Thomas Jones lived during his decade and a half in Baltimore. After adjusting for the street numbering change that occurred in Baltimore in 1886, I determined all the modern addresses I could find for Jones' whereabouts.
I then decided to try and track down Mrs. Agatha McCarthy and see where she lived. The first hiccup in my search for her was her name. Agatha's last name was McCarty not McCarthy as the auction article stated. I know that's a minor mistake, but it doesn't help with overall veracity of the story when you can't get the name of your provenance source right. With some digging I found that Agatha McCarty's maiden name was Shipley, she was born on December 5, 1870 in Baltimore County. In 1899, she married Frank P. McCarty and moved to Baltimore where she would spend the rest of her life. In the 1900 census the newlyweds are living at 2709 Boone St. In 1905, the two moved just a bit south to 2409 Greenmount Ave. In 1913 they moved a block south on Greenmount Ave. By 1920, the couple had moved into their forever home at 636 Cokesbury Ave. Agatha McCarty would live here for the rest of her life (save for her final hospital stay) until her death in 1968 at the age of 97.
And so, here is my map of all the places I could find where Thomas Jones and Agatha McCarty lived in Baltimore. Jones' residences are in yellow and McCarty's are in red. At no point does it appear that Agatha McCarty lived in a home formerly occupied by Thomas Jones. The two never even lived in the same neighborhood of Baltimore. Now I suppose it's possible that at some point after Jones moved back down to Southern Maryland a desk he owned might have been sold away or given to a neighbor and from there it somehow made its way to Mrs. McCarty. Furniture does have a habit of moving around. But even in that unlikely scenario, the question remains, "Why would Thomas Jones have Booth's childhood letters?"
For the most part, Jones largely stayed quiet about his involvement with John Wilkes Booth in the aftermath of the assassination. He was arrested on suspicion and held at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington for a time but was eventually released. It really wasn't until he consented to be interviewed by GATH in 1883 that he opened up about his role helping the assassin on the run. Eventually, Jones saw his claim to fame (infamy?) as an opportunity. In 1893, Jones published his own book entitled, J. Wilkes Booth: An Account of His Sojourn in Southern Maryland after the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his Passage Across the Potomac, and his Death in Virginia. It told of Jones' work with the Confederate mail line during the Civil War and how Booth came to be under his care during the escape. Jones took his book to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair hoping to sell a bunch of copies, but the Yankees in the Land of Lincoln weren't very good customers. The book was a financial flop for Jones who died two years later in 1895. Though the book doesn't go into the history of John Wilkes Booth, is it possible Jones somehow acquired Booth's childhood letters during his work on it? Possibly, but I think even this to be very, very unlikely. After a bit more research, I think I've come up with a more believable explanation.
Let's take a look at the map of the Jones and McCarty residences again.
I've zoomed in a little bit and added a purple pin. That purple pin marks 419 E 20th Street. From 1890 through 1913, that was the home of a grocer turned carpenter who had always resided in Baltimore. The carpenter who resided here had gone through a lot, including the death of his younger brother. The reason for his brother's death could be traced back to when a new family moved in across the street from his childhood home at 57 N Exeter in 1845.
Yes, I'm talking about John Wilkes Booth's childhood friend, Samuel Williams "Billy" O'Laughlen. Even at the time of the assassination, the elder O'Laughlen was in the grocery business and was trying his best to get his younger brother, Michael, involved. Part of the reason Michael O'Laughlen was able to meet with Booth so often in D.C. was because he was doing work for his brother's business there. The elder O'Laughlen transitioned to carpentry work after the Civil War and remained in Baltimore where he married and had children of his own. He died in 1915 at the age of 76 and is buried next to his brother and other family members at Green Mount Cemetery.
Looking at the map we can see that the home Samuel Williams O'Laughlen had for 23 years was in the same vicinity of where Agatha McCarty resided just off of Greenmount Ave. They're not next-door neighbors, but definitely closer to each other than Thomas Jones ever was. Also, unlike Jones who resided in Baltimore years before Agatha McCarty moved to town, O'Laughlen was there at the same time as the later owner of the letters. For 13 years O'Laughlen and McCarty lived in the same area of Baltimore, just blocks apart.
I'm inclined to believe that Agatha McCarty got the Booth letters from Samuel Williams O'Laughlen not Thomas Jones. The letters had been written to O'Laughlen after all, and he likely retained them. How McCarty ended up with them is anyone's guess. Maybe she knew the O'Laughlens from the neighborhood and received them directly or, as the original story goes, she found them in an old desk that had once belonged to them and somehow ended up in her possession. Regardless of how she came across them, we know that she did have them as of 1942. In that year an article was published about a Shipley family reunion, which Agatha McCarty nee Shipley attended. McCarty was a bit of a family genealogist and was mentioned in the article as having brought with her a file of 1,900 births and deaths in the family. The article also included the line that, "She also had a framed copy of a letter written by J. Wilkes Booth bearing his autograph eleven years before the death of Lincoln."
I haven't been able to find any other mentions of Mrs. McCarty and the Booth letters aside from this and the auction article from 1966. Whether there is any truth to her having burned several other letters before noticing the signature, we'll never know.
In the end, this is an example of the inherit difficulties in tracing provenance of an item. For these specific Booth letters, their still uncertain line doesn't really change much. The handwriting and contents of the letters from Booth and Billy O'Laughlen establish that they were, indeed, written by the future assassin of Lincoln. But for countless other artifacts, where the question of authenticity is less self-evident, establishing the provenance of the item and how it got from historical person or place to now is often filled with holes. Sometimes the best we can do is to lay out the evidence we have and acknowledge that it could be wrong or mixed up a bit as I think is the case here. In truth, far fewer things you see on display in museums are as iron-clad authentic as you might expect. This is not because museums are actively lying to you or trying to trick you, but because humans often leave poor or almost nonexistent records behind sometimes. Institutions do their best to engage in exercises like this to trace provenance, but as you can see, the process often raises more questions than it answers.
Finally, with all due respect to Mrs. McCarty knowing that the whole story of her flaming discovery may have been just a clever ploy by the auctioneer, please don't go around burning old letters and documents you might find without looking at them first. You never know what valuable piece of history you might uncover.
P.S. I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to promote an upcoming book on John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln assassination from a familiar name. Coming twenty-four years after the publication of his edited volume of Booth letters, "Right or Wrong, God Judge Me" The Writings of John Wilkes Booth, John Rhodehamel is set to release a new book on September 7, 2021 called America's Original Sin: White Supremacy, John Wilkes Booth, and the Lincoln Assassination.
I am very much looking forward to reading Rhodehamel's work which explores Lincoln assassination through the lens of the white supremacist act it was. Here's the publisher's description:
"In this riveting new book, John Rhodehamel argues that Booth's primary motivation for his heinous crime was a growing commitment to white supremacy. In alternating chapters, Original Sin shows how, as Lincoln's commitment to emancipation and racial equality grew, so too did Booth's rage and hatred for Lincoln, whom he referred to as "King Abraham Africanus the First." Examining Booth's early life in Maryland, Rhodehamel traces the evolution of his racial hatred from his youthful embrace of white supremacy through to his final act of murder. Along the way, he considers and discards other potential motivations for Booth's act, such as mental illness or persistent drunkenness, which are all, Rhodehamel writes, either insufficient to explain Booth's actions or were excuses made after the fact by those who sympathized with him."
Terry Alford, the author of Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, has already positively reviewed the book writing:
"This unique book combines Rhodehamel's intriguing insights with the excellent characterizations and top-tier research that have always distinguished his work."
With Alford's endorsement, I'm confident Rhodehamel's book will be a valuable addition to any Lincoln library and encourage any one interested in the Lincoln assassination to pre-order it from your favorite bookseller.
Categories: History	| Tags: Baltimore, Books, Booth Family, John Wilkes Booth, Michael O'Laughlen, Relics, Thomas Jones	| 10 Comments
A "Thomas Jones" Carol
Posted on December 21, 2016 by Dave Taylor
With the holidays almost here, it's time for another installment of Boothie Christmas caroling where we revise a classic Christmas Carol into a Lincoln assassination themed Boothie Carol. Today's song is a revised version of, "Silver Bells". I hope you all enjoy it in the humorous manner in which it is intended.
As sung to, "Silver Bells"
Easter morning, without warning,
Sam Cox comes down my street.
In the air there's a feeling of danger.
I start going, without knowing
Why his dad wants to meet,
But I get to Rich Hill and I hear:
Thomas Jones, (Thomas Jones)
I've hidden Booth in the thicket
Lend a hand (Lend a hand).
Help this man (Help this man).
Make sure he gets river bound.
When I find him, Herold's with him,
So I say to them both,
"We must wait for the troopers to leave here."
He wants papers. I say, "Later."
Then I give him my oath
No amount could cause me to betray
John Wilkes Booth, (John Wilkes Booth)
It's not quite time to go boating.
Hunker down (Hunker down).
Don't be found (Don't be found).
Soon it will be rowing day!
Previous years' Boothie Carols can be read here:
"It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Play" / It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
"We Bruti" / We, Three Kings of Orient Are
"Wilkes Booth the Head Conspirator" / Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
"Lewis Powell is Coming For You" / Santa Claus is Coming to Town
"Little Doctor Mudd" / Little Drummer Boy
"Boothie Wonderland" / Winter Wonderland
Categories: History, Levity	| Tags: Carols, David Herold, John Wilkes Booth, Levity, Pine Thicket, Rich Hill, Samuel Cox, Thomas Jones	| 7 Comments
Inside Thomas Jones' Huckleberry
Thomas Austin Jones has gone down in history for the assistance he gave assassin John Wilkes Booth and his accomplice David Herold. Jones not only cared for the two fugitives as they hid out in a pine thicket in Charles County, but he also transported Booth and Herold from the thicket to the shores of the Potomac from which they got into a boat and attempted to row across to Virginia.
Thomas Jones, who was born in the Port Tobacco area in 1820, owned two houses in Charles County during the Civil War. It was from his larger home on the Potomac River called Ravenscliff that Jones began his career as a mail agent for the Confederacy, but by 1865, his financial situation and death of his wife had caused him to downsize his estate to the more modest Huckleberry farm. Jones was living at Huckleberry with his nine children when Samuel Cox, Jr. showed up on the morning of April 16th and beckoned Jones to return with him to his father's farm of Rich Hill. At Rich Hill, Jones would learn about Cox's nighttime visitors and be given the task of caring for the fugitives while looking for an opportunity to get them across the Potomac.
Today, as part of the Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage in Charles County, Thomas Jones' home of Huckleberry was open to the general public for the first time in 56 years when it was featured in the 1960 Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage. The house has been remodeled and updated since Thomas Jones' days but still maintains much of its same 1865 character.
These images, along with the watchable yet somewhat motion sickness inducing video that follows, were all taken today after the garden tour was completed. About 450 people showed up and toured through Huckleberry while I stood in the room with chairs giving visitors a brief overview of Thomas Jones and his life before, during, and after John Wilkes Booth.
The visitors truly seemed to enjoy learning more about this unique man and his role in the Lincoln assassination story. Probably the most interesting little known fact about Thomas Jones is that, in 1893 when he traveled to the World's Fair in Chicago in order to try to tell his book about helping Booth, Jones actually borrowed and brought with him two artifacts from Dr. Mudd's house. The Mudd family allowed Jones to borrow the bed that Booth slept in at the Mudd house along with the parlor sofa on which John Wilkes Booth laid on while Dr. Mudd had inspected his leg. Having these artifacts did not help Jones much, however. His book sold very poorly in the Land of Lincoln and he came back to Charles County with many copies of the book and a great deal of debt from the venture.
Though it is impossible to say the next time that Huckleberry will be open to public tours again, the Loyola on the Potomac Retreat House has done a wonderful job as stewards of the house and property since they acquired it in the 1950's. So even if Huckleberry waits another 56 years before being on the garden tour again, I think, in the meantime, it will stay in very good hands.
Categories: History	| Tags: David Herold, Escape, Huckleberry, John Wilkes Booth, Samuel Cox, Thomas Jones	| 18 Comments
BoothieBarn Live on NBC 4!
If any of you in the D.C. metropolitan area happened to be watching NBC's News4 Midday today, you might have seen a familiar face and outfit. I was asked to appear on the live news show along with Melissa Willett of the Charles County Garden Club in order to promote this Saturday's Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage in Charles County. Every three years the pilgrimage takes place in Charles County and this year it will be featuring two properties connected to the Lincoln assassination story. Participants in the tour will have the opportunity to visit and go inside Thomas Jones' house of Huckleberry as well as walk the property of the Loyola on the Potomac Catholic Retreat which contains the exact site of where John Wilkes Booth and David Herold got into a boat and tried to cross the Potomac. Melissa and I were interviewed about the event by NBC anchor Barbara Harrison:
UPDATE: NBC 4 has put up a much better version of this interview on their website. Watch it here: http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Historic-Homes-Tour_Washington-DC-380991271.html
As stated in the interview I will be at Huckleberry from 10:00 – 5:00pm on Saturday, showing people the inside of the house and discussing Thomas Jones' role in assisting John Wilkes Booth. Tickets for the tour, which contains a total of eight homes, are $35 and they can be purchased at any of the sites during the tour on Saturday, May 28, 2016. The proceeds from the event will be benefiting the Maryland Veterans Museum.
I enjoyed the interview with Ms. Harrison and was happy to see that, in the footage that rolled as we spoke, the highway marker for the Garrett site made an appearance. I wrote the text for that marker and it was on the day that we unveiled it that I made my first live television appearance. I always have fun sharing my interest in the Lincoln assassination story with others, even if it is for a brief time during a busy news show.
Categories: News	| Tags: Charles County, Escape, Media, News, Thomas Jones	| 7 Comments
John Wilkes Booth in the Woods Finale
Posted on November 23, 2014 by Dave Taylor
On April 12th of this year, I underwent a journey into history. For 3 days and 2 nights, I completely immersed myself in the conditions John Wilkes Booth faced while hiding out in a pine thicket after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln. The project took months of preparation and the assistance of countless individuals who alerted me to new research, informed me of the intricacies of 19th century attire, and provided much needed moral support for such an endeavor. I strove to ensure that this experience was as genuine as possible and committed to feeling the same discomfort Booth felt.
Even from the beginning I knew I wanted to document the experience in order to share it with others. While the 19th century method of documentation would have been limited to the written word, modern technology allows us to go further. Therefore, with camera gear as my only anachronism, I walked into the woods with the same meager supplies that were afforded to Booth hoping to shed some light on this forgotten part of his escape.
Today, I publish the final installment of the series, bringing the project to its completion. I am extremely grateful to not only those listed in this final video but also the many others who helped my along the way and prayed for my safety. I hope that you have enjoyed this series as I hope to produce more like it in the future.
To watch the final video, you can either click on the image above and scroll down, click HERE to watch the video on YouTube, or play the embedded video below.
Remember that all of the videos in the series can be found in one place by clicking the "John Wilkes Booth in the Woods" image at the top of this post.
Thank you all for coming on this journey with me.
~ Dave Taylor
Categories: Uncategorized	| Tags: David Herold, Escape, John Wilkes Booth, Media, Pine Thicket, Thomas Jones	| 8 Comments
John Wilkes Booth in the Woods: Part 10
Posted on October 18, 2014 by Dave Taylor
The tenth installment of my series "John Wilkes Booth in the Woods" is now complete and available for viewing.
In this part I get some unexpected news and start walking towards the Potomac River.
There is one final installment of "John Wilkes Booth in the Woods" left to go. Stay tuned for the conclusion of this historical reenactment.
In this part I try one of Booth's favorite drinks and finally receive the newspapers I've been craving.
To watch the video, you can either click on the images above and scroll down, click HERE to watch the video on YouTube, or play the embedded video below.