St. Mary’s Church and Cemetery
Mudd Meets Booth
On November 13, 1864, here at St. Mary’s Catholic
Church, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was introduced to John
Wilkes Booth, the future assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. Booth had come to Charles County to
contact the Confederate underground here and recruit
men to help him kidnap the president. Mudd’s wife, Sarah, later wrote:
“The first time I ever saw John Wilkes Booth was in November 1864. My husband went to Bryantown
Church [St. Mary’s] and was introduced to Booth by John Thompson, an old friend from Baltimore, who
asked my husband if he knew of anyone who had a good riding-horse for sale, to which, he replied, ‘My next
neighbor has one.’ Booth came to our home that evening
to see about buying the horse. The next morning after
breakfast Booth and Dr. Mudd walked across the field
to Squire George Gardener’s. Booth soon returned, came
in, got his overcoat, and rode away. The horse he purchased was sent to him at Bryantown that evening.”
Booth and Mudd met several more times before the doctor set Booth’s broken leg at Mudd’s home on April 15, 1865. The Mudds are buried in the church cemetery
by the parking lot, to the left of the church. Dr. Mudd
was born on December 20, 1833, and died on January
10, 1883. Sarah Frances Dyer, his wife, was born on March 15, 1835, and died on December 29, 1911. The church cemetery contains the graves of several Mudd and Dyer relatives.
(Caption) The center part of St. Mary’s Church was built in 1846, then in the 1890’s it was enlarged to how we see it today. In 1866 the rectory was gutted by a fire and rebuilt. In the mid 1950’s it was torn down and replaced with the current brick rectory.
Marker is on Olivers Shop Road (Maryland Route 232) 1.2 miles south of Leonardtown Road (Maryland Route 5).
Courtesy hmdb.org
