Surratt House Museum - Construction of The House

Construction of The House

The original structure was built as a middle-class plantation home in 1852. Mary Jenkins met John Harrison Surratt in 1839, when she was 16 or 19 years of age (the date of her birth is not clear) and he was 26. An orphan, John Surratt was adopted by Richard and Sarah Neale of Washington, D.C., a wealthy couple who owned a farm. Jenkins and Surratt wed in August 1840. The Surratts lived at a mill in Oxon Hill, Maryland, and later at John's childhood home on a farm in the District of Columbia, In 1851, the farmhouse burned to the ground (an escaped family slave was suspected of setting the blaze). Within a year, John Surratt purchased 200 acres (81 ha) of farmland near what is now Clinton, and by 1853 he constructed a tavern and an inn there. Mary initially refused to move herself and the children into the new residence (possibly because of her husband's drinking). She took up residence at the farm again, but John sold both the Neale farm and Foxhall in May 1853 to pay debts and she was forced to move back in with him in December. The area round the tavern was officially named Surrattsville in 1853. Within a short period of time, a post office was installed inside the tavern. John Surratt was the hamlet's first postmaster. In 1854, John built a hotel as an addition to his tavern, and called it Surratt's Hotel. Over the next few years, Surratt acquired or built a carriage house, corn crib, general store, forge, granary, gristmill, stable, tobacco curing house, and wheelwright's shop.