Word: surratt
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...named John Surratt built a two-story clapboard house in the Maryland countryside about ten miles from Washington, D.C. Soon it served as a tavern, polling place, post of fice and home for the Surratt family, and the area became known as Surrattsville. After Surratt died in 1862, his widow Mary leased the building and moved to Washington, where she opened a boardinghouse. It was there, in 1865, that John Wilkes Booth plotted the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. One of Booth's associates, John Lloyd, turned state's evidence and implicated Mrs. Surratt in the conspiracy...
Though Lloyd had been drunk during the critical conversation with Mrs. Surratt, an overzealous military court accepted his testimony. The widow-whose last words to a priest were "Father, I am innocent"-was hanged in July 1865 along with three alleged members of Booth's cabal. The U.S. Government, meanwhile, had changed the name of Surrattsville to Robeystown; today, it is known as Clinton...
They continued to give their schools the Surrattsville name, and they kept a close eye on the Surratt house. In 1965 its last private owner donated it to the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. A group of local citizens raised money for its restoration, and last week it was formally dedicated as a historical monument. Boy Scouts directed traffic while an honor guard from nearby Andrews Air Force Base presented colors. Said Restoration Committee Chairman Thomas S. Gwynn Jr. to the 700 onlookers, including 30-odd Surratt descendants who attended the affair: "To remove this blot, this blemish...
...Actress Lupino became Director Lupino in motion pictures more than a dozen years ago (among her credits are RKO's Hard, Fast and Beautiful and The Hitch-Hiker). She got into television in 1956 when Producer Joseph Gotten asked her to direct The Trial of Mary Surratt for NBC's On Trial series. Since then she has directed more than 50 television shows-everything from Have Gun, Will Travel to Alfred Hitchcock Presents, where she developed such a cool hand with terror that she is now known in the trade as "the female Hitch...
...peripheral characters who take on fascination, partly because they are pitiable, but also because they are victims by association. Booth's sorry hangers-on, with one exception (Payne, who did attempt to murder Secretary of State Seward), are merely frightened and bewildered. And poor Mary Surratt, kind, dignified and finally broken, goes to the gallows wondering at the inhumanity she can hardly comprehend. Stacton's villain is Secretary of War Stanton who organized the military trial, hand-picked the judges and suborned witnesses...