From the Vault: Green Mount cemetery
If you were a big deal in Baltimore at one time, you wanted your body to end up at Green Mount cemetery when you died. “[T]he two-word spelling is the only correct one,” The Sun noted in 1957 (although just 26 years prior the one-word ‘Greenmount’ spelling had, in fact, run in the paper).
- Tallest stone (30 feet) at Green Mount Cemetery. July 7, 1957. (Bodine/Baltimore Sun)
- Greenmount Cemetery. A dome supported by Corinthian columns dramatizes a graceful and decorative elevated urn in Green Mount Cemetery. Photo dated March 26, 1969. (Bodine/Baltimore Sun)
- March 2, 1969.
- One of the more elaborate grave markers in Green Mount Cemetery is this one with columns and suspended tablet and decorative ironwork. March 2, 1969. (Bodine/Baltimore Sun)
- March 2, 1969. (Baltimore Sun)
- Family lot where John Wilkes Booth is buried. Photo dated January 7, 1936. (Bodine/Baltimore Sun)
- Green Mount Cemetery, July 7, 1957. (Bodine/Baltimore Sun)
- December 17, 1958. (Bodine/Baltimore Sun)
- Johns Hopkins grave, July 7, 1957. (Bodine/Baltimore Sun)
- Grave of Moses Sheppard, July 7, 1957. (Bodine/Baltimore Sun)
- Booth family lot in Green Mount Cemetery, March 15, 1992.
- Olivia Cushing, July 7, 1957. (Bodine/Baltimore Sun)
- Entrance to Green Mount Cemetery, July 7, 1957. (Bodine/Baltimore Sun)
- Green Mount Cemetery as seen from North Avenue, undated photo. (Baltimore Sun)
- Aerial view of Green Mount Cemetery, September 28, 1976. (Baltimore Sun)
- Green Mount Cemetery, July 17, 1970. (Baltimore Sun)
- Green Mount Cemetery, July 17, 1970. (Baltimore Sun)
- Green Mount Cemetery, July 17, 1970. (Baltimore Sun)
- Green Mount Cemetery, July 3, 1957. (Bodine/Baltimore Sun)
- This stone is incised “Hanson’s Wood Lott” and is believed to be an old city boundary marker. Photo from 1957. (A. Aubrey Bodine/Baltimore Sun)
Located in East Baltimore, it’s the final resting place to such legends as Johns Hopkins, Enoch Pratt, for whom the city library system is named, as well as – more sinisterly – John Wilkes Booth, the actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln.
History tells us Booth was shot in Virginia soon after he shot Lincoln in 1865. His body was taken back to Washington, identified by family members and friends and buried in Navy Yard. Six years later, however, his brother requested President Andrew Johnson’s permission to have him buried at the family plot in Green Mount Cemetery. He was granted it. And so the man who killed Lincoln was laid to rest in the fanciest cemetery in East Baltimore.
This may seem bizarre treatment for the body of a man who killed a U.S. President, much less one as beloved in modern times as Abraham Lincoln. But recall that, although Baltimore was considered part of the Union, many white Baltimoreans owned slaves and supported the Confederacy during the Civil War – as the abundance of Confederate statues around the city can attest. Even if they disagreed with his actions, Baltimoreans may have been sympathetic to Booth’s pro-slavery views.
Fascinatingly, there has been some controversy over the years as to whether the remains purporting to be Booth’s were actually his. In 1903, a man named John St. Helen “confessed” to being the real John Wilkes Booth before committing suicide. This story got widespread attention after author Finis L. Bates wrote a book called The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth, which sold 70,000 copies. (Conspiracy theorists will be intrigued to know that, according to Bates, St. Helen claimed the whole assassination was actually Andrew Johnson’s idea.) The Sun wrote in 1931 that St. Helen had claimed the man lying in Booth’s grave was really a Marylander named “Robey, or Ruddy,” a plantation overseer from Charles County.
For an extra macabre twist: Bates was able to obtain St. Helen’s remains and stored them in a Memphis garage. At some point, a side-show got hold of St. Helen’s body and the “Booth mummy” toured the country. The mummy became notorious again in the 1930s sense after scientists discovered a signet ring with the initial “B” in the mummy’s stomach – appearing to match a ring that Lincoln’s assassin was photographed in.
Like all good conspiracies, the theory died down only to pop up again at various stages throughout the years. Most recently came in the 1990s, when Booth descendants filed petitions supporting efforts to have his remains exhumed. They had their own questions they wanted answered.
Green Mount Cemetery fought their efforts in court, and won. The Booth grave remains untouched to this day, though passers-by sometimes leave pennies on the family stone, bearing the face of the man Booth killed.
trebort49
Nov 03, 2016 @ 12:43:07
First of all, Booth shot Lincoln on April 14, 1865, not 1863. Since Andrew Johnson served as President only until March 4, 1869 (Inauguration Day at that time), the request to Johnson to exhume Booth’s body and re-inter it in Green Mount, must have occurred less than 4 years after he was killed on April 26, 1865. It really would be nice if you people would get your facts correct.