Cleydael, King George County, Virginia

Cleydael's History:
The Stuarts:
Booth @ Cleydael:
Lees & Other Relations:
1. Lee Family Connections
2. Other Relations
Cleydael Today:
Living History, Tours & Film Work:
Links & Blogs:

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April 23, 1865: Lincoln's Assassin Visits Cleydael

Nowadays, Cleydael is primarily known for the visit on April 23, 1865 of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth and his accomplice David Herold.

Dr. Stuart fed them dinner but rapidly became suspicious and refused to let them spend the night. Instead, he sent them to his neighbor, William Lucas, a Free Person of Color, who occasionally took paid passengers to the Port Conway / Port Royal Ferry.

Dr. Stuart was deeply involved in the Confederate underground supply line from Washington City to Richmond and had been imprisoned twice for blockade running medical supplies from Washington to Virginia. The Confederate signal corps headquarters monitoring the Potomac was at Matthias Point, near his property at Cedar Grove. Because of his intelligence service contacts, he probably figured out precisely who Booth was and wanted him off his premises immediately, for fear of being implicated. Dr. Stuart may well have been aware of the earlier kidnapping plot, backed by Confederate intelligence, which would give him additional reason to be concerned.

From the Lucas cabin, Booth wrote Dr. Stuart a sarcastic note thanking him for his limited hospitality, and enclosing a desultory $2.50 payment for the food. Booth first drafted the note to enclose $5, but rewrote it, apparently thinking that $2.50 was a more insulting payment. These two notes were on pages from Booth's pocket diary, and account for two of the supposedly eighteen missing pages.

Dr. Stuart was about to burn the note when his son in law persuaded him otherwise. It was a good thing he did, as the note saved him from being charged as an accomplice. Dr. Stuart was indeed arrested and spent several days in the Old Capitol Prison, but was exonerated and allowed to return home. How much Dr. Stuart in fact knew and whether his testimony was primarily motivated by a sensible desire for self-preservation, is open to speculation.

The door where Herold knocked and through which Booth and Herold passed, is said to have been the door to the doctor's office, (photo at left) one of the two opening of the cross hall of the "T".

This door is now an internal door and leads to the kitchen extension, added ca. 1900, to the left of the house when viewed from what is today the front, but
was the back of the house in the 1860s.

David Herold

Booth's Route to Cleydael:
As Booth and Herold were coming from Mrs. Quesenberry's house on Upper Machodoc Creek, it is possible that their route to Cleydael was via what appears to have been an old road into the property from today's Rt. 301, traces of which can be seen in the woods at the back of the present Cleydael property, up past the then-front of the house. However, some sources suggest that Booth and Herold were given St. Paul's Church at Owen's Crossroads (rt 218 and Rt 206) as their main landmark and were told to take the left fork, to avoid the main road. It is hard to visualize this route being new to the area, and we are going to need to try to figure this one out, based on research into what roads, driveways and trails existed at the time.

Where did Booth and Herold go when they were at Cleydael? Where did they eat and who fed them? If a detailed examination of this sort of thing is as fascinating to you as it is to us, you might this page: Where Was Booth Fed?

Cleydael Today:
The Lucas cabin where Booth and Herold slept was demolished sometime in the early 1930s. Mrs. Graham Richardson showed author Stanley Kimmell the site where it had been on his 1934 visit. The cabin of Julius and Patsy Dixon, the house servants of Dr. Stuart's who appeared to have been the ones that actually waited on Booth and Herold when they had their brief supper at Cleydael, was also torn down in the mid 1980s.

If Booth was indeed fed in a barn or outbuilding at Cleydael, as some late 19th century writers suggested, then those buildings are long gone. The current old barn is newer than it looks. It is no older than turn of the century, and possibly dates only from the Richardson's time (ca. 1918). A silo remains from another, probably larger, barn, on a section of the land that is now part of the subdivision, but if this barn were the same vintage as the silos, it was 20th century as well. However, this may have been an older barn, as the 1937 WPA historic buildings survey describes an 1850s barn as being on the property. The old summer kitchen is long gone, probably demolished or let fall into disrepair after the current ca. 1900 lean-to kitchen was added. If it still was standing in 1937, it was not mentioned in the WPA report, although the report makes mention of a tenant house (this could have also been the Dixon house elsewhere on the property) and the accompanying photograph shows some kind of outbuilding or tenant house just beyond the wrap-around porch on the north side.

On the other hand, if Booth was fed in the house itself, the house still stands to interpret his visit, in a good state of repair and restoration.

More on This Topic:

The Documents in the Case: Text of Booth's note to Dr. Stuart, Dr. Stuart's testimony and the key secondary source accounts.

Coincidences and Connections: Interesting ties between Dr. Stuart and Booth, Herold, Mrs. Surratt and other key players in the story.

Where was Booth Fed? Sifting through the various sources to get at the real story....

Links & Recommended Reading Links to key websites and core bibliography on Cleydael, the Stuarts, Booth, and other related topics.