c. 1855. 3725 Dr. Samuel Mudd Rd.
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(Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress) -
(Lisa Pfueller Davidson and Catherine C. Lavoie) -
(HABS) -
(Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)
This mid-nineteenth-century frame farmhouse has been preserved as a house museum due to its association with physician Samuel Mudd, who was convicted as a co-conspirator in the Lincoln assassination for setting John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg when he fled through southern Maryland. Two sections of the structure were extant in Mudd’s time—a two-story, three-bay main block and a lower two-story, two-bay side wing. A third section was added in the early twentieth century to create its distinctive telescoping form, as were porches and cross gables, which have since been removed. Mudd was sentenced to prison at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas and pardoned in 1869 after his heroic efforts during a yellow fever outbreak.