Capital Wheel at Night

Surratt House Museum

9110 Brandywine Road
Clinton, MD 20735
(301) 868-1121
Visit Website
  • Details

    Experience history like never before! This historic house museum, built in 1852 as a middle-class farmhouse for the family of John and Mary Surratt, also served as a tavern and hostelry, a Post Office, and a polling place before the Civil War. During the war, it became a safe house in the Confederate underground that flourished in southern Maryland. In 1864, the Surratt family became entangled in a plot by John Wilkes Booth to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln. Instead, Booth assassinated the president in 1865. While fleeing the area, he stopped at the tavern to retrieve weapons and supplies he had hidden there. Consequently, Mary Surratt was tried in military court and convicted of conspiracy. On July 7, 1865, she became the first -woman executed by the federal government.