Guess who’s back, back again? This week we’re talking about one very historically important lady: Mary Surrat. Guilty or innocent, she has made her mark on history textbooks. Born in southern Maryland in either 1820 or 1823, Mary Surrat really only became historically important in 1865 after being linked to the plot to assassinate then President Abraham Lincoln. Starting with her birth, the date of which isn’t 100% confirmed and a bit of a joking matter for Mikaela, we delve into the childhood of Mary Surrat before moving onto her marriage and family life. At first it almost sounds like Mary was just in the wrong place at the wrong time but as we always say, history is a whole lot weirder than we think.

In antebellum Maryland,  Mary was involved in a lot of pro-Confederate talk and following the election of Lincoln her eldest son joined the Confederate Army in Texas while her youngest son John Jr. became a Confederate spy and remained close by her side throughout the war. In 1864, Mary moved from southern Maryland to her boarding house in D.C., citing economic expenses as her reasoning.  After moving into the D.C. boarding house, John Jr. starts to host a lot of Confederate allies and befriends John Wilkes Booth who starts to frequent the house in addition to other known co-conspirators. From there things just start to go downhill for Mary’s claim to innocence and the girls discuss Booth’s failed attempt to kidnap Lincoln, the evidence that piled against her in month leading up to the assassination, and her subsuquent trial and death sentence. But perhaps the most important part of today’s episode are Becca’s hot takes that John Wilkes Booth and Mary Surrat were “for sure boning” and that you can’t execute pretty people.

Lots of articles were used to create today’s episode but perhaps the most helpful was the NY Times 1865 article about Mary Surrat which can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/1865/07/08/archives/end-of-the-assassins-execution-of-mrs-surratt-payne-herrold-and.html