Soldiers were relentless in search for Lincoln's assassin
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(The story of President Abraham Lincoln’s assignation has always intrigued me and my interest was intensified by a letter I received from Steve Moore of Lake Villa, Ill. He had read my article in The Daily Bee that mentioned an acquaintance of Harp Turnbull, Grandma Hornsby, and offered to share with me the story of her husband, who spent his last years in Sagle and is buried next to his wife in the Westmond Cemetery. Today, we continue to follow the search for John Wilkes Booth — Abraham Lincoln’s assassin.)
Lt. Doherty’s expedition and War Department detectives who joined them, L.B. Baker (a cousin of Col. Baker), and Everton J. Conger, met the tug, John S. Ide, at the Sixth Street Wharf in Washington and set out down the Potomac just as the sun was setting. They landed in the dark, about 10 p.m., at Belle Plain, Va., and headed out into the night in search of any clue of Booth. They had orders to scour the area, known as the Northern Neck, for any trace of Booth’s trail. The second bit of information that had come from Col. Baker’s clue was that Booth had a broken leg and that it had been set by a doctor in Maryland. The expedition began knocking on doors at farms and asking sleepy Virginians if they had seen two suspicious men, one who had a broken leg.
They continued south through the Northern Neck and the trail grew cold and it wasn’t until they reached the ferry across the Rappahannock River that it grew warm again. They questioned the ferryman, William Rollins, and he admitted he had taken two men, unknown to him, across the river. They were in company with three former members of Mosby’s irregulars. Rollins’s wife volunteered that one of the ex-rebels, Willie Jett, was dating a girl in Bowling Green, Va. The cavalry pushed on to Bowling Green and to the home of Jett’s girlfriend.
Meanwhile, Booth and Herold had been taken to the home of a farmer, Richard H. Garrett, two-and-a-half miles south of the ferry landing on the south bank of the Rappahannock. Jett knew the Garret family slightly and knew farmer Garrett was a “good Samaritan.” Booth and Herold were introduced to the Garrett family as “John Boyd and his brother, David” They were said to be Southern soldiers on their way back home.
The patrol led by Lt. Doherty rode pass the Garrett farm on their way to Bowling Green on the late afternoon of April 25. By then, Cpl. Hornsby and the other troopers must have been bone weary after many hours of searching. They had been on the trail nearly non-stop from 10 p.m. on April 24 until they arrived in Bowling Green around midnight on April 25.
They tracked Willie Jett down at the hotel owned by his girlfriend’s family and put a pistol to his head. His options were simple: tell the soldiers where Booth was or end up with a bullet in his head. He gave Booth’s identify and location up in a heartbeat.
The troopers headed back down the road with Jett in tow. They arrived at Garrett’s farm just after midnight on Wednesday, April 26. They learned that Booth and Herold were in the farmer’s barn. A standoff took place but Herold finally gave himself up. Booth remained defiant and the barn was set on fire to smoke him out. Booth raised his carbine, as if to shoot someone outside the barn, and Sgt. Boston Corbett fired at Booth’s shoulder to disable him. The bullet from the snap shot went high and hit Booth through the neck instead, and the assassin fell paralyzed from the neck down. He was dragged out of the barn and laid out on farmer Garrett’s porch. This happened around 3 a.m. John Wilkes Booth slowly bled to death internally and died just as the sun was rising at 7 a.m. His body was taken back to Washington, autopsied, and buried in secret.
• To be continued.