End Of A Manhunt (June 1966 | Volume: 17, Issue: 4)

End Of A Manhunt

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Authors: Richard B. Garrett

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June 1966 | Volume 17, Issue 4

The exact circumstances of the capture find death of John Wilkes Booth in the early morning hours of April 26, 1865, after his flight from Washington, D.C., into Virginia have been obscured by a haze of conflicting reports and lost evidence. The account that follows, although written by an eyewitness, is not likely to settle any arguments conclusively: its author was only eleven years old on that April morning. He was Richard Baynham Garrett, youngest son of the Virginia farmer on whose property Booth was caught. The hoy grew up to become a Baptist minister; about 1882 he wrote his version of Booth’s last hours and thereafter often delivered il as a popular lecture. One motive for this was to clear his family name of opprobrium from both North and South: on the one hand the Garrett were accused of having sheltered Lincoln’s assassin, and on the other of having betrayed Booth to his pursuers. Dr. Garrett’s daughter, Mrs. Felix B. Wilson, kept the old copy book in which her father had written down the lecture, and recently allowed Miss Betsy Fleet, a writer and editor who lives in St. Stephens Church, Virginia, to prepare tin excerpt for publication in AMERICAN HERITAGE. Despite the youth of the narrator at the time of Booth’s capture, his account has an absorbing I-was-there quality. It begins with the unexpected arrival of three men at his home, two of them in Confederate uniforms.

About three o’clock on Monday afternoon, April 24.th, 1865, I first saw the men who were destined to bring so much trouble upon us. When they rode up to the yard gate I went out with my father to meet them. The one dressed in the uniform of a Confederate captain said, “Mr. Garrett, I suppose you hardly remember me.” “No sir, I believe not,” said my father. “My name is Jett, I am the son of your old friend of Westmoreland County.” Then turning to the other two men he introduced Lient. Ruggles and then said, “This is my friend Mr. James W. Boyd, a Confederate soldier, who was wounded at the battle of Petersburg. He is trying to get to his home in Maryland. Can you take care of him for a day or two until his wound will permit him to travel?”

You who know anything of Virginia as it used to be, will know that there could be but one response to such a request. My father cordially invited his guests to alight but Jett and Ruggles replied that they were on their way to Bowling Green and did not have time to stop. They helped the wounded man from his horse and handed him his crutches. After a few moments of conversation they rode away leading the horse Boyd had been riding, while he, following my father, hobbled painfully into the yard and took a seat upon the verandah. He seemed wearied and when I brought