Digging up the Lincoln Conspirators

I know that it might be a bit odd but cemeteries have always been fascinating to me.  I think the interest began when my fourth grade class visited the local Confederate cemetery.  Ever since, whenever I visit a cemetery I will wander among the tombstones and read the epitaphs.  They can often tell a remarkable story.

One of my favorite lessons that I have taught involves doing a cemetery investigation in Concord, Mass in which students try to piece together how people wanted to be remembered, or at least how other people wanted to remember them.  Among some of the most robust statements there is one lady whose epitaph simply says "She was very punctual".  Boy, they must have been really reaching for a compliment for that lady!

When I embark on one of my road trips, a visit to a cemetery is sorta a given.  Having spent the summer in and around DC giving tours, I decided to spend some time hunting down the final resting places of some of the Lincoln conspirators.  It turned out to be a much more difficult process than I had imagined.    An insane line of thunderstorms moved through the area that weekend, knocking out power to millions and uprooting thousands of trees.

John Wilkes Booth was the one I really wanted to find and I set out early one morning to find his grave, or at least the Booth family plot at Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore.  After battling the insane traffic I arrived and was greeted with a "closed" sign.  Throughout the entire cemetery there were many downed trees and they closed it due to safety issues.  Luckily, one of the office workers saw me standing outside the gate and I convinced her to let me in.  Yeah, I pulled the sad teacher card.  No shame though......it DID work.

I was under strict instructions to not go anywhere else in the cemetery which was really hard to abide by since 2 other Lincoln conspirators are also buried there.  Nonetheless, I decided not to disobey them and found the Booth plot.  I found it a bit strange that people have covered some of graves with Lincoln pennies.  Not really sure of the meaning, but I found the same type of remembrance left at the site where Booth was caught and killed.

On the journey, I also found the graves of David Herold, Mary Surratt and Lewis Payne(Powell).  Check out the video to take a look at the hunt.