Surratt House and Tavern - Clinton MD - People-Named Places on Waymarking.com

THE PLACE:
The Surratt House and Tavern is located at 9110 Brandywine Road in Clinton (formerly Surrattsville), Prince George's County, Maryland. The original structure was built as a middle-class plantation house in 1852.

It is a two-story, 19th-century wood-frame structure. It is a 40-by-32-foot (12.2 by 9.8 m) rectangular building with a gable roof. There are five windows on both floors in the western face of the house. A small porch with a gabled roof protects the front door. The rear (eastern side) of the house mirrors that of the front (western side). The interior of the house features a fireplace and chimney on the north and south ends of the building. A single stairway lead from the first to the second floor. The exterior of the house is clapboard, and on the north side of the house is a verandah with a shed roof that extends the width of the house

THE PERSON:
Mary Jenkins met John Harrison Surratt in 1839, when she was 16 or 19 years of age (the date of her birth is not clear) and he was 26. An orphan, John Surratt was adopted by Richard and Sarah Neale of Washington, D.C., a wealthy couple who owned a farm. Jenkins and Surratt wed in August 1840. The Surratts lived at a mill in Oxon Hill, Maryland, and later at John's childhood home on a farm in the District of Columbia, In 1851, the farmhouse burned to the ground (an escaped family slave was suspected of setting the blaze). Within a year, John Surratt purchased 200 acres (81 ha) of farmland near what is now Clinton, and by 1853 he constructed a tavern and an inn there. Mary initially refused to move herself and the children into the new residence (possibly because of her husband's drinking). She took up residence at the farm again, but John sold both the Neale farm and Foxhall in May 1853 to pay debts and she was forced to move back in with him in December. The area round the tavern was officially named Surrattsville in 1853. Within a short period of time, a post office was installed inside the tavern. John Surratt was the hamlet's first postmaster. In 1854, John built a hotel as an addition to his tavern, and called it Surratt's Hotel. Over the next few years, Surratt acquired or built a carriage house, corn crib, general store, forge, granary, gristmill, stable, tobacco curing house, and wheelwright's shop.

John Wilkes Booth and Herold stopped at the Surratt house briefly, picking up the rifles and binoculars, on their flight out of the District of Columbia after assassinating Lincoln.

Mary Surratt was sentenced to death on June 30, 1865, for being a co-conspirator in the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. She was hanged on July 7, 1865, at about 1:31 P.M.

(All of the above information came from Wikipedia
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Year it was dedicated: 1852 Location of Coordinates: At the Building Entrance Related Web address (if available): [Web Link] Type of place/structure you are waymarking: Building

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Date Logged Log User Rating   04/01/2023 Don.Morfe visited it