Grave Thursday: Sidney Raymond

Each week we are highlighting the final resting place of someone related to the Lincoln assassination story. It may be the grave of someone whose name looms large in assassination literature, like a conspirator, or the grave of one of the many minor characters who crossed paths with history. Welcome to Grave Thursday.

Sidney Raymond

Burial Location: Hampton National Cemetery, Hampton, Virginia

Connection to the Lincoln assassination:

Believe it or not, Jake Rittersbach (the subject of last week’s Grave Thursday) is not the only individual buried at the Hampton National Cemetery who has a connection to conspirator Edman Spangler. In 1865, Sidney D. Raymond was a Union army veteran who was employed as a detective in the D.C. provost marshal’s office. On the night of April 17th, it was decided that enough evidence had been produced to arrest Edman Spangler for complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Two detectives were sent out to locate Spangler and make the arrest at his boardinghouse. Detectives Sidney Raymond and William Eaton completed this task. After Spangler was taken to the Old Capitol Prison, a second group of detectives was sent back to Spangler’s boardinghouse in order to search his room. These investigators consisted of Sidney Raymond, Charles Rosch, and a third, unnamed detective. They only found a carpet bag at the house as Spangler apparently kept most of his things inside a trunk at Ford’s Theatre. The carpet bag consisted of nothing but an eighty-one feet coil of rope, some blank papers, and a dirty shirt collar. Raymond and the other detectives confiscated these items. The innocuous rope would later be used by the trial prosecution who attempted to prove that it was going to be used for nefarious purposes relating to Lincoln’s death. It was one of the many weak pieces of evidence used against Spangler.

Other than the arrest of Spangler and the search of his living quarters, nothing else is known of Raymond’s participation in the manhunt for Booth and his conspirators. On the 19th of May, William Eaton and Charles Rosch both were called to testify at the trial of the conspirators. Eaton testified about his arrest of Spangler while Rosch documented the few items found in his room. Nowhere in either one of these men’s testimonies is there any mention of Raymond, though Rosch did admit to having searched the room with two other detectives whose names he could not remember. Raymond no doubt read the testimonies of Eaton and Rosch in the next day’s newspaper and was apparently upset that his part in the investigation was not mentioned. On May 21st, Raymond wrote a letter to Col. Henry Burnett, who was serving as Judge Advocate at the trial, in order to set the record straight:

Unlike others, Raymond does not appear to have petitioned for any of the reward money for the capture of the assassins. Charles Rosch applied, and was awarded $500, but his reward stemmed from the fact that he was also present at the arrest of Lewis Powell.

Even though Sidney Raymond’s involvement in the Lincoln assassination story is brief, a few of his other unique life experiences bear mentioning.

Sidney Raymond didn’t live with his third wife

Sidney married his first wife, Eliza, in 1862. She died in 1871, at the age of 29. Raymond remarried a few years later to his second wife, Florence. This marriage lasted until 1909, when Florence passed away. Raymond was 66 years old when Florence died and one might think that his marrying days were over. But wouldn’t you know it, in 1915, love found a way. The then 72 year old Sidney Raymond married his third wife Alice, who was 49. On the occasion of their one year anniversary and Sidney Raymond’s 73rd birthday, the Baltimore newspapers ran a story about how Mr. Raymond had received a gift from his wife…through the mail:

“It is understood that the couple agreed that it would be happier to live apart, for the groom is afflicted with paralysis and the wife found this a handicap to her ideas of married life. Mr. Raymond said yesterday when seen at his home that he continues to contribute to the support of his wife, and exhibited a necktie that she had sent him as a remembrance of either the birthday or the marriage anniversary, she having failed to specify which.

Still Mr. Raymond was happy. He took a short walk in the morning and in the afternoon spent the time fondling his granddaughter Ruth, the daughter of his son, with home he now lives. His daughter-in-law is most solicitous for his comfort and the veteran feels better in her charge, he said, than if his wife were his caretaker…

‘Some day, maybe,’ said Mr. Raymond, ‘my wife and I may live together again, but at present we feel that both get along better separated.'”

Sidney Raymond won the lottery

In July and August of 1901, over 2 million acres of land were seized in southwestern Oklahoma. It was, sadly, yet another of our country’s shameful abuses of Native American tribes, as the land seized by the government consisted of the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache and the Wichita-Caddo-Delaware reservations. These seized reservations were the same ones that the Native American tribes had been forced into in the 1800’s when their original lands were seized. This complete disenfranchisement of Native peoples, and betrayal of prior treaties between the Untied States and the Native tribes, resulted in the profitable use of the Oklahoma territory by white settlers. To entice people to come and cultivate Oklahoma, over 13,000 160 acre tracts were given away in a lottery. Interested individuals registered and then waited for the drawing. Sidney Raymond entered this drawing and won. In 1901, he moved his family out to Oklahoma to live on his tract of land. For whatever reason, he did not stay there. After three years he sold his piece of the Native Americans’ land for $1,200 and moved back to Baltimore.

Sidney Raymond lost his whole family for 50 years!

When Sidney Raymond went off to fight in the Civil War his parents, eight brothers, and two sisters moved out west, eventually settling in Michigan. Unfortunately, no one thought to send word to Sidney about their move. When Sidney returned home from the war he found his homestead empty, with no idea where his family had gone. It took him 50 years to track them down:

Sidney Raymond, one of the men who arrested Edman Spangler in 1865, spent his final years at the Old Soldier’s Home in Hampton, Virginia. It would be interesting to know if he ever saw or talked to Jake Rittersbach, a man with whom he shared an unknown connection. Raymond died on March 7, 1927 and was buried in the Hampton National Cemetery just a few yards from Rittersbach, who had died less than a year prior.

GPS coordinates for Sidney Raymond’s grave: 37.018699, -76.334927