Civil War Articles by Julian WilliamsWillcox Kin Unknowingly Spent The Night With Lincoln's Killer
This article was compiled by Julian Williams.
If you've ever been in the wrong place at the wrong time you can relate to this story. Strange indeed are the happenings of history. Sometimes it seems that fact is stranger than fiction. In no other story is this truer than the time some Willcox kin spent the night with the infamous Lincoln assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
Now, the Willcoxes, originating up in Pennsylvania, rubbed elbows with some famous personages, amongst them being Benjamin Franklin, printer, and one of the ones responsible for the United States of America being successfully launched. Old Thomas Willcox, papermaker, and Benjamin Franklin, printer, were friends. It was a natural combination. Printers needed paper and papermakers needed printers. A no-miss. But the Willcox kin probably would have just as soon "missed" a close, but brief, encounter with John Wilkes Booth.
While one of Thomas's sons, John I, came to North Carolina, and his son, John Jr., came to Georgia around the lower Ocmulgee area, near Rhine and Jacksonville, Georgia, some of the others stayed up North and inevitably remained Yankees. But from all I have heard, they were good Yankees, and still are. Yes, I have heard the jingle about who the good Yankees are, but these were alive and still fit into that category. Some of my best friends are Yankees. However, some of them must have been borderline Yankees because they seemed to house Southern sentiments. Maybe not to the extent of wanting John Wilkes Booth as a bedfellow, though.
I will not try to improve on the writing of my honorary Willcox cousin, Terri Reed, from Hammond, Louisiana. I think she captures the moment quite well (her writing and her quoted material are in italics and/or enclosed in quotes; when I interrupt it will be in regular print):
"In the Willcox line, the Georgia clan we know are distantly related (shirttail cousins, I reckon) with Thomas Courtney Jenkins (father of John Carrell Jenkins). Thomas Courtney Jenkins's mother was Eleanor Willcox of Baltimore. That line and our Georgia clan share only one common direct ancestor, old Thomas Willcox of Ivy Mills, Pennsylvania (Ben Franklin's friend).
Our Georgia people all next descend from John Willcox I, as you know; Thomas Courtney Jenkins's mother is the daughter of John's brother and youngest sibling, Mark Willcox (the one up North), who inherited Ivy Mills and fathered many of our Yankee cousins."
But John Carrell Jenkins's head was turned more southward than northward and he joined up with the Army of Northern Virginia at Camp Lee (the forces of the Confederate States of America). Now, if you get the idea he was a lukewarm rebel, you need to analyze the following message left to his memory when the money he left built a church:
"This church was built with the money of one who gave his life for the Confederacy; its cornerstone came from the battlefield of Manassas; its limestone facings from Fisher's Hill; and its red brick was made from the soil of Front Royal, saturated with the blood of the soldiers of the Confederacy."
"The McCatees were cousins of the Jenkinses, and therefore allied in kinship with the Willcoxes.
McCatee wanted to enlist in the war, but on the Confederate side, so he had to leave Maryland and go to Virginia. He left Maryland with a companion, but it isn't clear just who he was, probably a relative. The going was rough as they feared they would be caught and be forced to join the Northern Army. The first night out they stayed at a farm house in Charles County, Maryland, where the friendly folks gave them lodging and it so happened that they knew some of their ancestors. As they were Southern sympathizers, they directed them to other southerners along the route.
The second night out they reached Surrattsville, Maryland, They stopped at the Surratts's boarding house as it was a well known fact they were southern sympathizers. After they became aware of their safety, they readily admitted they wanted to reach Richmond."
Note: After the assassination of Lincoln, Mrs. Mary Surratt was found guilty of being involved in the plot to take his life. She was hanged. Being aware of this makes us know that we are looking at serious criminals here. Did McCatee and his companion know they were in touch with persons who had maxed out on murderous intent or were they naive relative to this association? We can only guess. My guess would be that they certainly knew they were with sympathizers but not those of the most extreme passions.
"At dinner that night were Mr. and Mrs. Surratt and their daughter, Annie, and also another man -- a stranger to the two boys. Mr. Surratt and the stranger were warning the daughter about her companion of the afternoon with whom she had been driving. They were worried for fear he was a northern spy.
After the boys retired for the night, Mr. Surratt came in to tell them a gentleman had arrived who would occupy the other bed and for them not to be alarmed. He was a handsome man with black hair and dark eyes and also heavily armed, and had come from Richmond, Virginia. They learned later he was John Wilkes Booth.
He was gone the next morning when they joined the family and other guests for breakfast. After helping serve breakfast, Miss Annie Surratt (Mary's daughter) went to the adjoining room to play the piano and sing rebel songs, little realizing the great tragedy their ardent sympathies would later bring to her family.
As they started on their way, Mr. Surratt offered them a ride in his wagon with his negro driver which would take them a few miles out of town. On the way they passed a man driving a sulky. The driver told them he was Dr. Mudd."
Note: Dr. Samuel Mudd missed the hanging gallows by one vote. He was sentenced to life in the Dry Tortugas prison off the coast of south Florida but was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson after he administered medical help to the inmates and personnel of the place. Dr. Mudd had been accused of setting the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth (he broke it after shooting Lincoln and jumping to the stage) and giving aid to him in his attempted escape from the arms of the law.
"Later they (McCatee and his traveling companion) were to remember that they had come close to two of the figures in one of the greatest tragedies of their times. They finally reached the home of Mr. Grymes, who rowed them across the Potomac where they were finally out of danger in Virginia.
After they reached Richmond, they joined Co. D, 2nd Regiment, Maryland Infantry, CSA. Mr. Macatee was wounded in the leg at the battle of Gettysburg. Later gangrene developed and almost cost him his life. He was captured before the surrender and held prisoner of war until August 1865. He always kept his blanket and gun with him, but had to leave his gun at a spring where he stopped for water as he was too ill to carry it. (The blanket was in the family until five years ago [who knows when that was?] when it was misplaced or destroyed.)"
Thus, the tale of two Southern sojourners into the maelstrom of intrigue and assassination; the dark hole of death which begot death; the event which seemed to widen the chasm between two suffering giants, the North and the South. Over 600,000 souls had been lost on the soil of the respective states; and John Wilkes Booth added one more - President Lincoln. Then, the fleeing Booth was killed in a barn.
History, too, has strange bedfellows. And so did the Willcox kin that night when they slept in the same room with John Wilkes Booth.
Credits:
Terri Reed and her sources of information on Mr. McCatee and John Wilkes Booth;
Kathleen Brown for St. John the Baptist Church materials;
The Front Royal Historical Society;
Telfair County History (1807-1987);
information furnished by the Willcox Family.
