His Name is Still Mudd is the name of a book by a friend and colleague of mine named Ed Steers. Steers is one of the foremost experts on Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and adept at tracing the muddled messes of history. But even Ed probably couldn’t track the messes of Mudds coursing through Lincoln – and my own – histories.
Let’s start with the easy part. You’ve probably heard about Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, the physician who set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Mudd (i.e., Samuel) was born in Charles County, Maryland, the fourth of ten children. He later married his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Frances Dyer (whom he called “Frank”) and settled into a 218-acre plantation called St. Catharine, a wedding gift from his father carved off from the main plantation. Samuel was both a country doctor and a gentleman farmer, although the eleven people he enslaved did most of the actual work. Mudd was thirty-one years old and the father of four children when Booth and David Herold came knocking on their door at about 4 a.m. Saturday morning, April 15, 1865.
Mudd did himself no favors by lying to authorities, claiming he didn’t know Booth and merely did what any country doctor would do when an injured stranger showed up at his door. Ed Steers makes the definitive case in his book that Mudd did, in fact, know Booth, and while he likely wasn’t aware of the assassination plans, he certainly aided and abetted Booth’s escape. Long story short, Mudd was convicted with other conspirators and sentenced to life in prison at Fort Jefferson on the Dry Tortugas (to get there, drive all the way to the end of the Florida Keys, then take a plane or boat out to the island where the fort/prison is located). You can read about the place here. Mudd was eventually pardoned by Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, after working to save lives during a yellow fever epidemic on the island.
This is where it starts to get weird. On April 14th, just hours before heading to his fateful date at Ford’s Theatre, Abraham and Mary Lincoln visited the Washington Navy Yard and toured the ironclad Montauk. Days later the Montauk would be the temporary prison for six of the accused assassin’s co-conspirators. Doctor Samuel Mudd and Mary Surratt missed the boat, but 12-days later the body of John Wilkes Booth, who Mudd had aided, was brought back to the Navy Yard and onto the deck of the Montauk for examination and autopsy.
Dr. Mudd’s grandson, Richard Mudd, who received bachelor’s, master’s, Ph.D., and medical degrees at Georgetown University before serving as an occupational physician for many years, spent much of the 20th century trying to clear his grandfather’s name before finally passing away in 2002 at the age of 101. Among his many attempts included writing to Presidents Carter and Reagan in turn, begging each to pardon Dr. Mudd. [The title of Ed Steers’s book, His Name is Still Mudd, reflects the historical outcome.] Both Carter and Reagan seemed to buy into Richard Mudd’s persuasion (ignoring evidence to the contrary) and wrote open letters expressing their faith in Dr. Mudd’s innocence (which Steers categorically kiboshes). Carter wrote that he hoped to “restore dignity to your grandfather’s name and clear the Mudd family name of any negative connotation or implied lack of honor.” Reagan reiterated the theme, writing “I came to believe as you do that Dr. Samuel Mudd was indeed innocent of any wrongdoing.” That said, both presidents did what politicians are wont to do, which is, nothing. They concurred, or more accurately, their legal advisers concurred, that the full presidential pardon of Mudd by Andrew Johnson in 1869 had already done the job and there was nothing more they could do.
There is another odd connection between the Lincolns and the Mudds. Lincoln’s father Thomas was saved from kidnapping and likely death when he was eight years old by his older brother Mordecai. Their father (i.e., Lincoln’s grandfather, also named Abraham) had just been killed by a Native American, who was subsequently shot to death by fifteen-year-old Mordecai. As the oldest son, Mordecai inherited all the Lincoln property when he came of age a few years later. Now much wealthier, Mordecai built a larger house down the road from the family homestead and got married. And here is where the story gets even stranger. Mordecai gained even more pedigree by marrying Mary Mudd from one of the “first families” of Washington County, Kentucky. And yes, Mary Mudd is a distant cousin to Samuel Mudd, the doctor who set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln. You can read more about the family homestead here.
Which gets me to newsman Roger Mudd. Mudd (Roger) is descended from a different branch of the same tree that produced Dr. Samuel Mudd. Roger Mudd is, or at least was, a well-known and highly respected journalist from a long, long time ago when such a thing was actually the norm. Roger was born in Washington, DC and made a local name for himself in Richmond, Virginia before gaining national fame reporting and anchoring for CBS News and NBC News and The History Channel. He lived for many years in Mclean, Virginia.
Which is how I met Mudd.
The short version of the story is that the scientific consulting firm that I worked in Washington, DC was owned by a law firm. Our main liaison was a managing partner of the law firm, who unexpectedly, and quite suddenly, passed away in his 70s from a massive pulmonary embolism. At his funeral service, held in St. Albans on the grounds of the National Cathedral, I gave my condolences to his wife and found myself chatting with this tall, distinguished man that I recognized immediately. It was Roger Mudd.
Mainly we talked about how we knew the deceased. It turns out my old colleague had been Roger Mudd’s neighbor in Mclean. They were good friends and card-playing buddies living in big houses in the ritzy part of the DC suburbs while I was just a young science guy still getting my feet wet in Washington. The conversation didn’t last long, but long enough to impress my newsmonger father when I told him about it. I don’t recall if I had made the Lincoln connection of Roger Mudd to Dr. Mudd at the time, but it was nice to meet someone of that stature. I’ve been lucky over the years to meet some “royalty” in both my science and historian careers, including some actual royalty, and he turned out to be a delightful guy.
Roger Mudd would live many more years, passing away at the age of 93 only in 2021.
[Photos of Dr. Samuel Mudd and Roger Mudd]
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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.