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Hidden History: How a Lincoln Conspirator's Skull Ended Up in Florida [1]
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Date: 2025-09-09
One of the conspirators in the John Wilkes Booth plot to kill President Abraham Lincoln is buried in Florida. Or, at least, part of him is.
"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.
Lewis Thornton Powell photo from WikiCommons
The conspiracy which would assassinate Lincoln began in late 1864, as the Civil War was coming to its end. Booth, as a well-known theater actor, had numerous political connections, and one of these led him to a Maryland doctor named Samuel Mudd, who was part of an underground Confederate network that carried out spy work and sabotage. Mudd in turn introduced Booth to John Surratt. The 21-year old Surratt was an agent for the Confederate intelligence service, and had acted as a courier to carry messages and information between Washington DC and Confederate territory in Virginia. Now, Booth and Surratt, meeting in the DC roominghouse owned by Surratt’s mother Mary, began an audacious plan: they would kidnap Lincoln and exchange him for a release of Confederate prisoners of war. In 1864, security precautions were lax: not only was the White House unguarded and open, but Lincoln often walked or rode, sometimes alone, through the streets of the city.
Over the next few months, several more Southern sympathizers were recruited for the plan. David Herold was a former schoolmate of John Surratt who worked as a pharmacist. George Atzerodt, who ran a coach-painting business, lived in northern Virginia and served the Confederacy as a spy and a courier for Surratt. Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen were both former schoolmates of Booth: Arnold was an ex-Confederate soldier, and O’Laughlen was part of a Confederate sabotage ring. The final plotter, who was living under the alias "Lewis Payne", was Lewis Thornton Powell.
Powell had been born in Alabama, moved to Georgia as a child, then relocated as a teenager to Florida, where his father was pastor of a church in the town of Apopka, near present-day Orlando. After Florida seceded from the United States and the Civil War began, several military units were organized to fight for the Confederacy, and in June 1861 Powell, though only 17, lied about his age and enlisted with the 2nd Florida Infantry Regiment, assigned to I Company (the “Jasper Blues”).
Late in July, the Regiment was sent to Richmond, where they were to undergo more training while also being assigned to guard the Union troops captured in the First Battle of Manassas. From here the unit was sent into combat during the Peninsula Campaign, and participated in battles at Williamsburg, Seven Pines, Gaines Mill and Malvern Hill. Powell, however, had missed most of this. His one-year enlistment had expired in April 1862, and he returned home to Florida for two months before re-enlisting, once again with the 2nd Florida. He was sent back to Richmond, where he fell sick in November and was laid up in a field hospital for a short stretch, rejoining active duty just in time for the Battle of Fredericksburg in December.
When the 2nd Florida went north to Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863, Powell went with them, and the unit was part of the Battle of Gettysburg. On the second day of the fighting he was hit in the wrist by a Minnie bullet and was captured as a POW by Federal troops. He ended up in a military hospital in Baltimore, where, in September 1863, he charmed a nurse into helping him escape. At the time Baltimore was full of Southern sympathizers, and with their help Powell was able to make his way to Virginia, where he joined up with “Mosby’s Raiders”, a guerrilla group commanded by Confederate Colonel John Mosby. He joined Mosby’s men in a number of partisan raids over the next year.
At some point during this time, Powell was recruited by the Confederate intelligence service, and in January 1865 he left Virginia and made his way to Baltimore and then DC, now using the name “Lewis Payne”. It was here that he became part of Booth’s conspiracy to kidnap Lincoln.
On March 17, 1865, the group was ready to put their plan into action. Lincoln was scheduled to visit a group of wounded Union soldiers in a hospital in DC, and Booth, Surratt and the others positioned themselves along the route, planning to ambush him, kill any escorts, and spirit him away to Richmond. At the last minute, though, Lincoln changed his schedule and did not make the trip.
Now, the goals of the plot changed: instead of kidnapping President Lincoln, the group would kill him. Originally, the plan seems to have been to use explosives to blow up the White House. When there seemed to be no good way to accomplish that, the plan turned to shooting Lincoln instead. At the same time, the plotters would kill Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Henry Seward as well, decapitating the Federal Government in one stroke and, they hoped, giving the South an opportunity to rise up again, continue the war, and win its independence from a crippled and confused US Government.
Over the next three days, once again meeting in Mary Surratt’s boardinghouse, the plan took shape: Booth would kill Lincoln at the Ford Theater, just a few blocks from the White House. Atzerodt would kill Vice President Johnson at the Kirkwood House hotel, and Powell and Herold would kill Secretary Seward at his home on Pennsylvania Avenue. The others would then help the assassins escape into Confederate-held Virginia. It was decided that all three assassinations would take place at 10:15pm.
On the evening of April 14, all three assassins took their positions. Booth succeeded in shooting Lincoln, and was himself shot and killed by pursuers several days later. Atzerodt checked into the Kirkwood House where Johnson was staying, but got cold feet and decided not to go through with the plan. Instead, he spent hours drinking, then walked aimlessly around Washington DC. He too was arrested after the assassination.
Secretary Seward had, just a few days before, been in a carriage accident and had broken his jaw, and now on the night of April 14 he was in bed recovering. At around 10pm, Powell and Herold arrived at his house. With Herold staying behind to act as a lookout, Powell, armed with a Whitney Navy revolver and a Bowie knife, entered the house by telling the doorkeeper that he was delivering medicine. Once inside, Powell started up the stairs, but was stopped by Seward’s son Frederick, who said Seward was sleeping and he would take the medicine to the Secretary himself. Powell pulled his revolver and tried to shoot the younger Seward, but the gun misfired, and Powell pistol-whipped him instead, fracturing his skull. Entering Secretary Seward’s room and drawing his knife, Powell was then confronted by the Secretary’s daughter Fanny, and threw her to the floor before making his way to the bed where Seward was stretched out. Jumping on Seward, Powell slashed at his face and neck, stabbing him five times. At this point Seward’s male Army nurse, George Robinson, entered the room and pulled Powell off the bed.
Powell slashed at him too, and, thinking Seward was dead (in fact the wounds were mostly superficial), ran down the stairs, where he engaged in a fight first with Seward’s other son Augustus and then with a messenger from the State Department named Emerick Hansell, who just happened to be there. After stabbing both of them too, Powell ran outside–only to find that Herold, upon hearing all the commotion inside the house, had panicked and run away with both of the horses. In desperation, Powell ran off into the night.
For the next several days, he hid in a nearby cemetery, sleeping in a tree, until he made his way to the Surratt boarding house and was arrested by police who were already there.
In all, eight people were put on trial for conspiring to kill Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward. Because the war had not yet officially ended on April 14, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton tried them in a military court rather than on civilian criminal charges, on the grounds that they had attacked the military Commander in Chief. Four of the defendants–Powell, Mary Surratt, Herold and Atzerodt–were sentenced to death. They were all hanged on July 7, 1865.
Once they were dead, all four of the bodies were buried in the prison courtyard in plain pine coffins. It wasn’t until 1869 that the family members were allowed to claim the bodies for reburial. It is still unclear what happened to Powell’s body. Some reports say that his family members took the body to Florida and buried it there, but there are no records of this. Other accounts state that the body was never claimed and that it was buried in a cemetery in DC, then may possibly have been later relocated to a different cemetery where it may have ended up in an unmarked mass grave, but there are no records of that either. The exact whereabouts of Powell’s body are still unknown.
For some reason, however, the skull was separated from the body, perhaps by the funeral parlor or perhaps by one of the Army officers. Somehow, the skull ended up in the Smithsonian Institution’s collection, where it had been labeled as “Payne” and was identified as a “criminal” who had been hanged in DC. The skull had been mistakenly stored as part of the Museum’s large collection of Native American bones and skeletons, and it was not until 1991 that a researcher noticed it. It was quickly identified as the remains of Lewis Powell.
The museum determined that Powell’s closest living relative was 70-year old Helen Alderman, his great-niece, and she agreed to claim the remains. The skull was taken to the Community Cemetery in the little town of Geneva, Florida, about 20 miles northeast of Orlando, and was buried next to the grave of Payne’s mother Caroline. It is still there today.
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