Lincoln Assassination Tours

Lincoln Assassination Tours Update

Posted on January 7, 2026 by Dave Taylor

In October, I announced the launch of Lincoln Assassination Tours, my own venture to restart the John Wilkes Booth escape route bus tours that I used to narrate for the Surratt Society before COVID-19 brought them to an end. Since that time, I’ve been blown away by the support of so many of you who follow this blog. While I knew there was still a demand to join the manhunt for Lincoln’s assassin, I wasn’t sure whether a new business focused on such a specialized tour could break through and find its audience. That is why I am so pleased to announce that Lincoln Assassination Tours has reached the minimum participant threshold for our first tour on March 14, 2026. This means that our inaugural tour is officially confirmed!

We’re going to have a great time in March chasing John Wilkes Booth over his escape route through D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. I’m thankful to everyone who has purchased tickets for this tour and for our subsequent tours planned for Saturday, April 18, and Sunday, April 19.

I’m indebted to my wonderful site partners who have helped to spread the word about the tours.

  • The Surratt House Museum in Clinton, Maryland, has endorsed the tour on the Prince George’s County History Facebook page and kindly provides space for our advertising cards and bookmarks in their visitor center.
  • The Dr. Samuel A. Mudd House Museum in Waldorf, Maryland, likewise displays our cards in their gift shop (see image below) and has written about us on their Facebook page.
  • The Historical Society of Charles County (the operators of the newest museum on the route, Rich Hill) has been so supportive of our efforts, emailing its membership about the tours and posting several times on its Facebook page. We’ll be getting some cards into their hands when we visit Rich Hill in March.
  • Even though the Booth family home of Tudor Hall in Harford County, Maryland, isn’t on the tour, they have some of our marketing material on hand for when they open up again for their own tours and talks in the spring. Click the link to check out their impressive lineup of speakers for 2026.
  • The folks at Explore Charles County have been great. They have added our tours to their community calendar and display our cards in the county’s welcome center off of Route 301.
  • The Surratt Society graciously mentioned Lincoln Assassination Tours in the September/October 2025 edition of the Surratt Courier.

Lincoln Assassination Tours cards on display in the gift shop of the Dr. Samuel A. Mudd House Museum

While meeting the minimum threshold for the March tour is a reason to celebrate, I’m now focused on making sure our two tours in April go forward. We still have over two months of sales to go before we reach the “make-or-break” cut-off date for minimum participants for the April tours. I’m still hopeful we will get enough sales to run both tours, but I would be eternally grateful for your help in getting them over the line. Word of mouth is really the best way to help a new business get on its feet, especially one as specialized as this. Please, if you’re so inclined to help, tell your friends, family members, and social circles about Lincoln Assassination Tours. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky. If you follow this blog, I know you’ll find those pages just as interesting. I regularly post information about the tours and the Lincoln assassination in general. “Liking” and sharing our posts on those platforms can really help extend our reach.

While Lincoln Assassination Tours is a business, profit is not my goal. I am an educator who taught elementary grades for 12 years. As the narrator for the Surratt Society tours, I truly loved taking people down the escape route of the assassin and teaching them about this momentous event in history. The goal of Lincoln Assassination Tours is to teach a new generation about the death of Abraham Lincoln. The minimum participant threshold does not include any profit; it merely covers the costs associated with operating the tour. At this moment, for example, the March tour count just covers the expenses, and there is no profit to be had. While I would love to sell out a whole bus, I’m just as happy doing the March tour for the smallest possible number of people, because I truly love giving the tour and sharing the experience with others.

I hope you’ll consider registering for one of our April tour dates. At the end of this post, I’ll include hyperlinked images to where you can purchase your tickets. Even if you previously took the Booth escape tour with the Surratt Society, Smithsonian, or another group, I can assure you that there is something new to experience on a Lincoln Assassination Tour. Our tours are the first to include a stop in the brand-new museum of Rich Hill in Charles County, Maryland. Our narration not only describes the movement of the assassin and his accomplices, but also the everyday people who crossed paths with this momentous event and the scores of manhunters who sought justice for the President. Each Lincoln Assassination Tour will end with a free raffle where a lucky participant (or two) will walk away with a book about Lincoln’s assassination. And, of course, all participants will receive a coveted Lincoln’s Avengers sticker and Lincoln Assassination Tours bookmark for successfully tracking down John Wilkes Booth.

I promise I won’t always be asking for help like this, but the success of these spring tours is crucial to ensuring they can continue for years to come. My hope is that these first few tours will lead to positive reviews and allow me to record more tour-specific content to help grow a wider audience. They will also help me gain valuable experience to refine the tour process across booking, marketing, and execution. Essentially, being able to run three tours this spring will set us up for continued success going forward.

If you have already purchased a ticket for a Lincoln Assassination Tour, you have my deepest thanks. It’s because of you all that a new group will be able to experience this fascinating tour and momentous time in history firsthand on March 14. For those who haven’t bought tickets but have been thinking about it, I’d love to have you join us for our tours on Saturday, April 18, or Sunday, April 19. These tours will take place just days after the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s death, and in the midst of the hunt for the assassin. You will be able to traverse and stand in the same spots the assassin did exactly 161 years before. You can’t get much closer to history than that.

Thank you all, again, for your amazing support. I know Lincoln Conspirators has been a little slow of late as I focus on getting Lincoln Assassination Tours off the ground, and I greatly appreciate your patience and understanding.

Click the image above to register for our John Wilkes Booth escape route bus tour on Saturday, April 18, 2026.

Click the image above to register for our John Wilkes Booth escape route bus tour on Sunday, April 19, 2026.

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The Kaw and the Last Lincoln Conspirator

Posted on November 16, 2025 by Dave Taylor

November is Native American Heritage Month. Years ago, I shared a paper I wrote about Holata Micco, a Seminole chief in Florida who was known as Billy Bowlegs to non-Native speakers. As a child, John Wilkes Booth sometimes went by the nickname of Billy Bowlegs among his friends due to his bowleggedness. As a teen, he even ended a letter with this moniker.

I wanted to mark Native American Heritage Month on the social media pages for Lincoln Assassination Tours. I considered rehashing my work on Holata Micco, but the connection between the noted Seminole chief and the future assassin of Lincoln is pretty contrived. I considered discussing the Piscataway tribes as it was through their ancestral lands that the assassin made his escape. In fact, one of the figures in the escape, Oswell Swann (who innocently escorted the fugitives to Rich Hill), is said to have been part Piscataway Indian.

In the end, however, I decided to take my motivation from a historic image. The March 9, 1867, issue of Harper’s Weekly contains a full-page drawing of the return of John Surratt to the United States after a year and ten months on the run.

The scene at the Washington Navy Yard was captured by Andrew McCallum, the same artist who, in 1865, had sketched the nearby home of David Herold.

A notable detail in the drawing showing John Surratt’s return is the presence of three Native Americans wearing headdresses.

The inclusion of Native Americans in this scene was not artistic license. The corresponding article in Harper’s contains the line, “There were not many persons besides the officials and guards present, only a few reporters and our artist, and a number of Indians of the Sioux delegation now at Washington, having been permitted to witness the scene.” Harper’s was partially right. A large delegation of Native Americans was present in Washington in February of 1867, but only some were from the Sioux tribe. While I initially held little hope of being able to identify the specific Native Americans who observed John Surratt’s arrival, I was fortunate that the Washington Chronicle newspaper had already done so.

I was even more fortunate to discover that the Kaw delegation was photographed during their time in Washington, providing me with a photo of the two chiefs who witnessed the disembarking. After doing more research on the Kaw people and their history, I was excited to write something about them.

In the end, I decided to create a video about the Kaw men who were present when John Surratt returned to face trial. I put the video on the Lincoln Assassination Tours‘ Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and YouTube pages. I hope you’ll consider following those platforms for more historical tidbits.

So, without further ado, here’s the video, The Kaw and the Last Lincoln Conspirator. I hope you enjoy it.

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Lincoln Assassination Tours Trailer

Posted on November 2, 2025 by Dave Taylor

Thank you all for your lovely outpouring of support for Lincoln Assassination Tours. Since launching over a week ago, we’ve sold several tickets for each of our first three Spring 2026 tours. At this moment, our discounted debut tour in March is already 24% full! I’m very grateful to all of you who have purchased tickets or have joined our mailing list to stay up to date about future tours.

I hope you might also consider following the Lincoln Assassination Tours social media accounts on your favorite platforms. As a niche tour company, it can be hard to find an audience. By following, interacting with, and sharing our content on social media, you can help spread the news about what we have to offer. You can find Lincoln Assassination Tours on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and YouTube.

To help advertise the tours, I put together a trailer and just published it across our platforms. I hope you’ll give it a watch and consider sharing it with any friends or family you think would enjoy the tour.

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Introducing LincolnAssassinationTours.com

Posted on October 23, 2025 by Dave Taylor

In 2009, between my junior and senior years of college, I took a trip with my dad to Washington, D.C. Having been born and raised in Illinois, I had never been to the nation’s capital before. As good Midwesterners, we had taken family trips to places like the Mall of America in Minnesota, Mackinac Island in Michigan, and even to parts of Canada to see Niagara Falls. However, our family vacations never extended to the East Coast (except for Disney World in Florida).

Thus, it was exciting when Dad and I flew to D.C. in May of 2009, just after college let out for the summer. As the youngest of my siblings and the only one still living at home, this was a nice, intimate trip for two (my mother opted out of this particular excursion). We visited all the iconic locations in and around the nation’s capital, including the Smithsonian museums, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, Ford’s Theatre, Arlington National Cemetery, the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress, and more. We had the typical D.C. tourist experience and enjoyed it all.

But, in addition to seeing the “normal” D.C. sites, my dad and I also went off the beaten path a bit. This was primarily because, since around my freshman year of high school, I had become increasingly interested in the subject of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. I had devoured many books on the subject as I quickly became fascinated with this event in our history. While reading the books was gratifying, I felt drawn to visit and see some of the places mentioned in the books firsthand.

Although it cost us a bit more to rent a car, my patient father indulged my obsession, and near the end of the trip, we headed south out of Washington. Dad drove while I tried my best to be the navigator, armed with printed MapQuest directions. We visited and toured the Surratt House Museum in Clinton and the Dr. Samuel A. Mudd House Museum in Waldorf. We then went to the cemeteries containing the graves of Edman Spangler and Dr. Mudd. Then we hit the long haul down to the site of the Garrett farm, where John Wilkes Booth died. The median strip where the Garrett house once stood was still open to the public in those days, so Dad and I parked on the side of the highway and trekked in. When we got to the small clearing that marked the area where the assassin died on the Garrett porch, Dad took this photograph of me.

While we had witnessed and toured many iconic sites during our visit to D.C., my favorite part of the whole trip was standing in that nondescript wooded median strip in Virginia. Millions flock to D.C. each year to experience the majesty of the memorials, but how many people would ever stand where Dad and I stood, knowing the history that occurred at this otherwise forgotten patch of land? Reading about a historical event is one thing, but nothing can replace the power of visiting a historical site firsthand, especially one that is off the beaten path.

Fast forward to 2015. I’m living and teaching in Maryland, while devoting my free time to my interest in this history. Just before the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, I became the newest guide for the John Wilkes Booth escape route bus tours organized by the Surratt Society. This was after a year of training and taking the tour with the two other bus tour guides at the time, the late John Howard and Bob Allen. Becoming a narrator for the bus tour was incredibly exciting for me. I had moved to Maryland to be closer to where it all happened and to experience even more off-the-beaten-path history. As an educator who adores public history, guiding folks along the route used by the assassin became my favorite activity. People loved taking my tours, and I loved giving them. I loved discussing the history with other interested folks and seeing them marvel, as I once did, at being transported to the actual sites they had previously only read about. It truly was the perfect role for me, and I always looked forward to my turn to narrate the next tour. From 2015 to 2019, I narrated 20 bus tours for the Surratt Society (along with several other small group tours). After completing my last tour in September 2019, I couldn’t wait for the next season in April 2020.

With historian and author Ed Steers, who took my tour in April 2019.

We all know what happened right before that next season of tours was slated to start. The COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down, and it was clear that it would be a long time before any bus tours would start up again. Progress was made with the COVID vaccine, and in time, life returned to normal for many. However, even as other tour companies resumed their efforts, the Surratt Society’s bus tours never returned after this shutdown. The reasons for this are as complex as the tour itself, and it has not been due to a lack of desire on the part of the Society. In the end, however, the organization has just been unable to restart the tours, despite its best efforts.

However, that drive in me to help people experience this monumental event in our history firsthand has not diminished. I know there is still a demand to explore this history beyond the pages of a book or website. That is why I am announcing the start of a new, personal venture. I am launching Lincoln Assassination Tours, a tour business designed around educating a new generation about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by taking them down the escape route of John Wilkes Booth.

Lincoln Assassination Tours offers an approximately 10-and-a-half-hour chartered bus tour in which participants join the manhunt for Lincoln’s assassin. On a scenic, 170+ mile round-trip journey, guests will learn about the plot against Lincoln and his cabinet members by retracing the assassin’s escape route firsthand. The tour includes entry and visits to three museums (including the soon-to-be-opened museum of Rich Hill) and two private properties. All participants will also receive their choice from 40 catered box lunch options, included in the ticket price.

Whether you are like me in 2009, yearning to visit the sites associated with his history for the first time, or a seasoned veteran of escape route tours, I hope you will check out Lincoln Assassination Tours to learn more about us and our tour. At Lincoln Assassination Tours, we adhere to the same historical standards established by the Surratt Society over its decades of tours, while offering an updated and brand-new experience for everyone. Although this tour is not affiliated with the Surratt Society, I feel fortunate to have their blessing and support in this new venture. I wouldn’t be the historian I am today if they didn’t take a chance on me as their guide back in 2015.

Lincoln Assassination Tours is currently booking for our inaugural escape route tour on Saturday, March 14, 2026. This debut tour will be followed by two more tours, being offered on Saturday, April 18, 2026, and Sunday, April 19, 2026.  To celebrate the launch of this new endeavor, we are offering a special $20 discount on our March tour date.

For those who won’t be able to make our first set of tours in the spring of 2026, fear not. We are planning future tours for the fall of 2026 (and possibly more before then). The best way to stay up to date on new tours is to sign up for our email list. Near the bottom of the Lincoln Assassination Tours homepage is a box labeled “Join Our Email List.” By entering your email address in that box and clicking submit, you will receive an email every time we post a new update to the site. You can also keep up to date with us on social media. Lincoln Assassination Tours is on Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky.

I’m very excited to start this new venture, helping folks experience the history behind Abraham Lincoln’s assassination firsthand. Our initial focus for the time being will be the John Wilkes Booth escape route tours, but I have several ideas and plans for other tours as well. Sometime in the near future, we hope to offer walking tours, cemetery tours, and even some unique, one-off chartered tours.

I invite you all to take a look at the Lincoln Assassination Tours homepage, About page, and Frequently Asked Questions. When the time is right, I hope you’ll Register for a tour with us. I can’t wait to see you following in the manhunt for Lincoln’s assassin.

– Dave Taylor

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