Adam Scott and Will Forte portray John Wilkes and Edwin Booth in an episode of “Drunk History”
So, I’m still dying of laughter after watching this, yet to be aired, episode of Comedy Central’s new series, “Drunk History“. As it’s name suggests, “Drunk History” consists of individuals drinking a lot of alcohol and reciting an historical event. Then the historical event in question is acted out by popular actors, using this drunk recitation as the narration. The concept started as a web series on the site FunnyOrDie, and has since been picked up by Comedy Central as a TV series. The first episode about events in Washington, D.C. is not scheduled to air until July 9th, but eagle eyed Carolyn Mitchell noticed it was already up on Comedy Central’s website.
The untrained John Wilkes Booth on the stage
Warning – There is a considerable amount of swearing in the video as you might expect from a drunk person trying to remember things. Regardless, the piece is historically hysterical.
Uh….Line?
You can watch the entire episode if you wish, but the part about the Booth brothers starts after the first commercial break at about the 8:10 mark. The Booth part concludes after the second commercial break, so make sure to sit through it. Without further ado, here’s the link to the Comedy Central episode of “Drunk History” featuring the story of Edwin and John Wilkes Booth:
“At last, after what seemed an interminable age, we reached [Huckleberry]. We stopped under a pear tree near the stable, about forty or fifty yards from my house. It was then between nine and ten o’clock.
‘Wait here,’ I said, ‘while I go in and get you some supper, which you can eat here while I get something for myself.’
‘Oh,’ said Booth, ‘can’t I go in and get some of your hot coffee?’
It cut me to the heart when this poor creature, whose head had not been under a roof, who had not tasted warm food, felt the glow of a fire, or seen a cheerful light for nearly a week, there in the dark, wet night at my threshold, made this piteous request to be allowed to enter a human habitation. I felt a great wave of pity for him, and a lump rose in my throat as I answered, ‘My friend, it wouldn’t do. Indeed it would not be safe. There are servants in the house who would be sure to see you and then we would all be lost. Remember, this is your last chance to get away.’
To refuse that appeal, prompted by a feeling I could so well understand, was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.” – Thomas A. Jones in his book, J. Wilkes Booth
This morning I was put to work by Carolyn Mitchell, head of the Spirits of Tudor Hall Facebook page. She was wondering if I knew the location of the “Home for Travelers” mentioned by Booth in two of his letters to William O’Laughlen (Michael’s brother). Booth gave a lengthy description of it in one letter from 1855:
“I should say the home for travelers
Tudor Hall, Jan 25th: 1855
My Dear Friend.
I am at present seated in a very snug bar room by a comfortable log fire and the Poplar wood whish is spitting and crackling and scending forth a merry blaze up the chimney puts me in mind of home, and by the bye it is home, but not my home. What I mean is that on the sign is written the Home For Travelers. I don’t know wether you are acquainted with the house or no, but I think you have past it, it is situated in Churchville, a very pleasant place, and may I say a very bad place, but no wonder, it has been an old saying, (nearer the church nearer the devil)…
…Friend John W. Booth”
After searching for a bit, I concluded that the most likely candidate for this “Home for Travelers” was likely the hotel run by Col. William F. Hanna off of Calvary Rd. in Churchville. Hanna’s was described as a large hotel that proved a popular place for political debate, seemingly supporting Booth’s idea of it being both “pleasant” and “bad”.
Hanna’s hotel was also only three miles away from Tudor Hall, which would make it a convenient place for 16/17 year old John Wilkes to escape the farm and his responsibilities for awhile.
An 1878 map of Harford County showing the distance between Tudor Hall (Purchased that year by Samuel Kyle) to Hanna’s Hotel in Churchville (Hanna died that year)
So, while I’m not 100% certain that William Hanna’s hotel is the “Home for Travelers” Booth writes from, it is a logical possibility.
While looking into this for Carolyn, I consulted the Bel Air newspaper, The Southern Aegis. It is from there that I got the above advertisement for the public meeting at Hanna’s. I also stumbled across two 1857 advertisements that I had read about, but completely forgotten about until now:
In September of 1856, Edwin Booth had returned home to Tudor Hall after four years away. He found his mother and siblings in desolate conditions, the winter of 1855/56 having almost wiped them out. With his new found wealth, he whisked the family out of the Bel Air country and set them up in Baltimore. On July 18, 1857, John Wilkes commissioned these advertisements in the Aegis, to sell the family’s horses and rent out the land around Tudor Hall. The newspaper was published weekly, with these two advertisements appearing on July 18th, July 25, August 1, and August 8th. It appears Wilkes was successful in selling the horses by then as the August 15th and August 22nd editions of the Aegis only contained advertisements for the renting of Tudor Hall. Patrick Henry King and his family succeeded in renting Tudor Hall and were still living there when the assassination occurred.
The King family in front of the Booth Log cabin after the assassination.
Samuel Bland Arnold, a conspirator in the kidnapping plot against Abraham Lincoln, was pardoned and released from his imprisonment at Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas in February of 1869. After his release, Sam attempted to return to the life he had known by going home to Baltimore. The transition, predictably, wasn’t easy. Sam had difficulty finding employment in the city due to his connection with Lincoln’s assassination. He worked in his father’s bakery for a time, but the business itself had never recovered from the cost of Sam’s legal fees. By 1883, Sam became his own employer by entering the occupation of a butcher. From 1883 to 1896, Sam Arnold the butcher lived at various residences in Baltimore, selling his meats from a market stall in the Fell’s Point neighborhood. Then, in 1896, he up and moved out of Baltimore and found a home in southern Anne Arundel County near Friendship, Maryland.
The farm that Sam Arnold moved to belonged to a family by the name of Garner. As a young boy, Arnold was educated at St. Timothy’s. This is the same school where he met John Wilkes Booth for the first time and their friendship began. In addition to young Booth, Sam had befriended another student named Robert Garner. Sam became very fond of the Garners and even went so far as to call Robert Garner’s mother, Anne Garner, “a second mother to me.” Mrs. Garner died in Baltimore in 1894, and it is likely that Sam reconnected with the Garners after her death. When he moved to the Garner farm in 1896, he was employed by Mrs. Garner’s daughter as the farm manager. Here, he found the seclusion and isolation he had probably desired for years. Sam wrote his memoirs, but claimed they would not be published until he was dead. He lived a hermit’s life, tending to his favored friends, the animals.
As I’ve written previously, Arnold was motivated to release his memoirs ahead of schedule after reading of his own death and reactions to it in the newspapers. Though it took some prodding and a lot of correspondence on the Baltimore American newspaper’s part, Sam finally consented to let them run his memoirs in December of 1902. In preparation for the serial, the Baltimore American sent out a person to interview and photograph Sam Arnold at his residence. These pictures of Sam, his house, his dog, and his feathered friends appeared alongside his story.
Sam’s account was serialized and published in the American and other newspapers across the country garnering great interest. Still, Sam Arnold remained on his secluded farm leaving only to visit his brother in Baltimore from time to time, and when he required medical assistance at Johns Hopkins after fracturing his hip in a fall in 1904. Sam stayed on the farm until the end was in sight, finally traveling to the home of his sister-in-law when consumption had all but finished him. It was at her house in Baltimore that he died on September 21st, 1906.
Practically all of the above comes from the research of Percy “Pep” Martin who has done a tremendous amount of research of Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlen, and other Baltimore connections to the assassination. His research was shared with me thanks to Art Loux. While going through Art’s file on Arnold, I found that, in 1980, Mr. Martin had found and traveled to the farmhouse where Sam Arnold resided near Friendship, MD. Address in hand, today I tracked down and visited Sam Arnold’s residence off of Fairhaven Road in Tracys Landing, MD. Here is a video and some pictures we took of the house:
As mentioned in the video, the house is currently up for sale (though under contract, I believe), and so here are some more pictures of the house from the real estate website:
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It is amazing to me how relatively unchanged the house appears from the image of it in the Baltimore American taken over 110 years ago:
References:
Memoirs of a Lincoln Conspirator by Samuel Bland Arnold edited by Michael Kauffman
Baltimorean in Big Trouble: Samuel Arnold, A Lincoln Conspirator by Percy E. Martin, History Trails, Autumn 1990 – Spring 1991
Art Loux Archive
The collapse of Ford’s Theatre in 1893 was a major news story. Even before the official investigation began, letters to the editors of various D.C. newspapers laid the blame of the collapse on the feet of a plethora of people. In the early days, the greatest scapegoat was Congress and the government for allowing workers to remain housed in knowingly dangerous or condemned buildings. Many called for inspections of all federal buildings in Washington to prevent the tragedy from happening elsewhere. Perhaps it was a latent sense of pride in his building, or a desire to distance his reputation from yet another tragedy, that led 64 year-old John T. Ford to pen this letter to the Evening Star:
John Ford would end of being very much correct in his claims. It was not any flaw in the building that led to its collapse, but rather the incompetence of the workers excavating the basement who did not adequately support the foundation during their dig. As Tudor Hall stands today, architect James Gifford had built a sturdy building with Ford’s Theatre that could have lasted for much longer, had it not been for human error and negligence.
I’m always looking for ways to branch out here on BoothieBarn. My goal is to educate and interact with people about the Lincoln assassination. However, there is one particular demographic that remains elusive: kids. It’s ironic, really. In real life I’m an elementary school teacher and yet the part of history that interest me the most is one that would be particularly difficult to relate to children. How can I teach, in a developmentally appropriate way, the complexity of the death of Abraham Lincoln? Well, luckily I’ve found a new resource to make it much, much easier. How do you teach kids about such a sensitive topic such as Lincoln’s death or the Civil War? With that time tested tool, the coloring book.
I picked up this resource for a mere dollar and flipped to the back hoping to find a page that I could use to teach kids about the Lincoln assassination. Fate was one my side, and I now have this wonderful teaching tool:
Feel free to click and print this picture full size for you to use with your own kids. Drop off copies at your local library. Hand them out to neighborhood kids at play during the summer. Help get kids interested in history.
The real wonderful thing about coloring book pages is that they appeal to everyone, even adults. Why, with only a box of twelve colored pencils and a couple hours, I turned the above blank canvas into this piece of historical art:
The following article was written by The Rambler and appeared in February 9th, 1913 edition of the Evening Star. The Rambler, whose real name was John Harry Shannon, wrote for the Star from 1912 until 1927, telling stories about his travels in and around Washington. Many of his “rambles” involved trips into Maryland’s “assassination country” as I like to call it. This article however, deals with his knowledge of one particular artifact relating to Lincoln’s assassination: the Treasury Guard flag.
Treasury Guard flag on display at the Ford’s Theatre Museum
“An Interesting Flag
The flag which led indirectly but none the less certainly to the capture of John Wilkes Booth is now one of the main objects of interest in the Treasury building. For many years this famous flag occupied a place on the wall of the northeast corridor of the Treasury and divided honors with the money vaults as an object of popular interest. It was for many years about the first thing guides pointed out to visitors. Then the flag was loaned to Capt. O H. Oldroyd and for a long time had a prominent place in the museum of Lincoln relies. Not long ago it was reclaimed by the Treasury and hangs once more in that grim and classic building.
It was in the knotted fringe of this old flag that one of Booth’s spurs caught when he leaped from Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theater on the night of April 14, 1863, after having mortally wounded the President and stabbed Maj. Rathbone. Had not the spur caught, Booth’s leg would in all probability not have been fractured or injured and his capture would perhaps have been very much more difficult.
When the advisability of a Home Guard for Washington was suggested the Treasury Department took an early interest if not the initiative in the movement. In In that department there was soon organized a full regiment. It was called the Treasury Guard, and Treasurer E. E. Spinner was made its colonel. Every afternoon after the department closed the regiment was drilled on the White Lot. Large crowds witnessed the drills of the Treasury Guards and the ladies of the department and the wives and daughters of the clerks naturally took a fond interest in the organization. These ladies at a meeting determined to present to the regiment a stand of colors. The regimental flag of the guard in the office of the captain of the watch of the Treasury, but it is the national flag with which this account deals.
On the night of April 12, 1865, the Treasury Guard gave a ball at Ford’s Theater. The theater was transformed into a large ballroom by the erection of a temporary flooring over the tops of the scats in the lower part of the house. The decorations were elaborate, and the flags of the guard were draped on the boxes. The guest of honor at that ball was Commodore Winslow of the Kearsarge. It was the first visit of that officer to Washington after the sinking of the Alabama.
It is narrated that after the ball John T. Ford requested the officer of the Treasury Guard to allow the flags to remain on the boxes as the President was expected to attend a performance at the theater the night of April 14. How Booth shot the President how he leaped from the box, how his spur caught, how his leg was broken or fractured by the fall, and how his injury proved an impediment in his flight are matters of common knowledge.
The day after Lincoln’s death, when the whole city was practically under martial law and Andrew Johnson had taken the oath of office as President in that room of the Treasury building long occupied as the office of the director of the mint, but which was then the office of the Secretary of the Treasury, the guard flag was brought up from the theater and taken into this room. The rent made in it by the assassin’s spur was exhibited to all those present. The Treasury Guard soon after disbanded, the flag was stored away and forgotten, and it was not brought to light again until 1872, when Capt. Cobaugh of the Treasury watch found it in the machinists’ shop in the basement of the building. The flag was loaned to the Lincoln Museum by Secretary Gage, but it was recalled not so long ago.
The pistol used by Booth in the assassination of Lincoln is in a safe in the office of the judge advocate general of the army, having been in the custody of that officer since the trial of the conspirators. This fact was brought out a few years ago by the sale in Philadelphia of a pistol with which the crime was said to have been committed. The purchaser wrote to the War Department and learned that he had been victimized.
Booth’s spur, the one which tripped him, and which was removed from his injured leg by Dr. Mudd, is in possession of Capt. Oldroyd.”
“Tuesday morning, after my visit to the pine thicket, I rode up to Port Tobacco.
Tuesday was then, as it is now, the day for the transaction of public business in our county. I was therefore likely to meet a good many people in the county-town that day, and bear whatever was going on.
I found the men gathered about in little groups on the square, as men in villages will al ways be found when anything of more than usual interest is engaging public attention. Upon this occasion, of course, they were discussing the assassination, and the probable whereabouts of the assassin. The general impression seemed to be that Booth had not crossed the river.
I mingled with the people and listened till I was satisfied that nothing was positively known. Every expression was merely surmise.
It was while in Port Tobacco that day I made the acquaintance of Captain Williams. He was standing in the bar-room of the old Brawner Hotel (now St. Charles Hotel) in the act of drinking with several gentlemen who were gathered around him, when I entered. Some one introduced me to him and he politely invited me to drink with him. Just as we were about to take the drink, standing with our glasses in our hands, he turned to me and said, ‘I will give one hundred thousand dollars to any one who will give me the information that will lead to Booth’s capture.’
I replied, ‘That is a large sum of money and ought to get him if money can do it.’
In Mr. George Alfred Townsend’s article, ‘How Wilkes Booth Crossed the Potomac’ published in the Century magazine of April, 1884, the author comments upon this offer made in my presence and partly to me, in the following terms: ‘When we consider that the end of the war had come and all the Confederate hopes were blasted and every man’s slave set free, we may reflect upon the fidelity of this poor man whose land was not his own and with inevitable poverty before him perhaps for the rest of bit days,’ etc. It appears from this that Mr. Townsend thinks I deserve some need of praise for not being bribed to betray what I considered a sacred trust. But it seems to me that, had I, for money, betrayed the man whose hand I had taken, whose confidence I had won, and to whom I had promised succor, I would have been, of all traitors, the most abject and despicable. Money won by such vile means would have been accursed and the pale face of the man whose life I had sold, would have haunted me to my grave. True, the hopes of the Confederacy were like autumn leaves when the blast has swept by. True, the little I had accumulated through twenty years of unremitting toil was irrevocably lost. But, thank God, there was something I still possessed — something I still could call my own, and its name was Honor.
In 1889, soon after I was dismissed from the humble position I had held under the Federal Government in the Navy Yard at Washington, I met, for the first time since those memorable and eventful days of which I have been writing. Captain Williams. He was then a detective in Washington City. In the interview I then had with him (a not very accurate account of which was published in the newspapers at the time) Captain Williams told me that that day in Port Tobacco he very strongly suspected I knew more than I was willing to tell. But there was certainly nothing in his manner from which I could have inferred that he was any more suspicious of me than he was of any one else in southern Maryland.” – Thomas Jones from J. Wilkes Booth
Port Tobacco weaves in and out of the assassination story. In the days of the kidnapping plot, John Surratt and Thomas Harbin convinced Port Tobacco-ite Richard Smoot to sell them a boat with which to ferry the abducted President across the Potomac river. Conspirator George Atzerodt lived, worked, and “married” in Port Tobacco before joining Booth in his plot. As seen above, Thomas Jones, while hiding Booth and Herold in the pine thicket after the assassination, could have made a fortune in Port Tobacco had he betrayed the pair. Conspiracy was ripe in Port Tobacco.
You can read more about Port Tobacco’s history as the former county seat of Charles County and it’s involvement in the Lincoln assassination story by visiting these sites:
LincolnConspirators.com 
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