John Surratt - Later Life

Later Life

Surratt tried to farm tobacco, then taught at the Rockville Female Academy. In 1870, as the last surviving member of the conspiracy, Surratt began a much-heralded public lecture tour. On December 6, at a small courthouse in Rockville, Maryland, in a one hour and fifteen minute speech, Surratt admitted his involvement in the scheme to kidnap Lincoln, but still denied any knowledge of the assassination plot, reiterating that he was in Elmira at the time. He disavowed any participation by the Confederate government, reviled Louis Weichmann as a "perjurer" responsible for his mother's death and claimed his friends had kept the seriousness of her plight in Washington from him. After this revelation, it was reported in Washington's Evening Star that the band played "Dixie" and a small concert was improvised, with Surratt the center of female attention. Three weeks later, Surratt was to give a second lecture in Washington, D.C., but public outrage forced its cancellation.

Surratt later took a job as a teacher in St. Joseph Catholic School in Emmitsburg, Maryland. In 1872, Surratt married Mary Victorine Hunter, a second cousin of Francis Scott Key. The couple lived in Baltimore and had seven children.

At some point after 1872 he was hired by the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, rising to freight auditor and ultimately treasurer of the company. Surratt retired from the steamship line in 1914, and died of pneumonia on April 21, 1916, at the age of 72. He was buried in the New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore.