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.
