Harry Tracy Western Badman and Killer

 

Harry Tracy was a two-bit loser destined for oblivion when he busted out of the Salem, Oregon, prison on June 9, 1902. What he did afterward made him front-page news across the country and ensured his place as one of the old west’s worst badasses.

It wasn’t the first time Tracy had busted out of prison. He broke out of jail four times in Utah and Oregon and twice in Colorado. The Spokesman-Review marveled at how he managed to get weapons while in prison.

Tracy received a one-year sentence for burglary in Utah but served just two months. He joined four other prisoners and overpowered guard John Van Stetter, taking a double-barreled shotgun from him.

Van Stetter got a little too close to Tracy when he stopped to examine his broken shovel. The next thing he knew, Tracy pulled a revolver from his pocket and beat him senseless.

After immobilizing the guard, Tracy switched clothes with him and walked away with his three fellow prisoners. Not too much later, Tracy hooked up with some of the Robber’s Roost Gang—Dave Lent, Pat Johnson, John Bennett, and David Merrill. They killed a boy named William Strang in Sweetwater County, Wyoming.

A few days later, Tracy murdered deputy sheriff Valentine Hoy, a member of the pursuing posse. Detectives captured Tracy and threw him in jail. He beat three guards into insensibility and escaped, but was quickly recaptured. This time they locked him up in the Alpine, Colorado jail. Tracy got away again two weeks later after nearly killing a guard during his escape.

John Bennett wasn’t as lucky. A masked group of twenty-five men took him from deputy sheriff Farnham near Ladore, Colorado, and strung him up.

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Thomas Jefferson His Home At Monticello

 

Monticello was Thomas Jefferson’s masterpiece—a reflection of his intellect and love for architecture. He constantly refined its design, adding innovations like hidden dumbwaiters and revolving bookstands.

During the Revolutionary War, Jefferson had to flee in 1781 when British troops approached. Though they didn’t destroy Monticello, they looted his food and drank his prized wine.

After the war, Jefferson returned, making Monticello his sanctuary. He experimented with agriculture, wrote to political allies, and hosted guests like James Madison and the Marquis de Lafayette.

In his final years, mounting debts forced his family to sell the estate.

Artist Jules Guerin

 

Artist Jules Guerin created a series of illustrations for The Century Magazine on the wonders of the ancient world in the early 1900s.

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Pope Leo XIII Humanized the Church

 

Pope Leo XIII, Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci, was elected pope in 1878, during a time the Vatican was losing power. He focused on shaping the Church’s moral and social influence.

His most famous work, Rerum Novarum (1891), tackled the struggle of workers in the Industrial Revolution. It defended workers’ rights and fair wages, earning him fans with workers and reformers.

He promoted scholarship, opened the Vatican Archives to researchers, and encouraged dialogue between science and religion.

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Lulu Glaser Fiery and Flirtatious

 

Lulu Glaser was as famous for her love life as she was for her performances. She married actor Ralph C. Herz in 1907 but divorced him just a few years later.

Rumors swirled about her fiery temperament and flirtations with wealthy admirers. Gossip has it she had several high-profile romances that never made it to the altar.

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Geraldine Farrar Hollywood Heartthrob

 

Geraldine Farrar was a Hollywood heartthrob who captivated audiences with her stunning beauty and magnetic presence. Bold, talented, and full of energy, she made her mark in both opera and silent films.

She enjoyed a colorful love life, too, enjoying a passionate affair with actor Louis Calhern.

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Actress Elenora Duse Redefined Acting

 

Eleanora Duse’s emotional depth and intensity made her unforgettable. Her natural style helped redefine acting.

Duse inspired playwrights like Henrik Ibsen, who wrote roles just for her. She became one of the most revered actresses of her time.

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Murder of Inga Magnusson in Dorchester, Iowa

 No one was particularly surprised when they learned Earl Throst was the killer. He was a strange, queer-looking little man with long, unkempt hair. Most people described him as not too bright or mentally defective.

One of Inga’s friends laughed when she heard Throst say they were engaged. She told reporters the relationship was all in Throst’s head. Inga “wouldn’t have had anything to do with a man like him.”

Inga Magnusson and Earl Throst went to school together as kids and were passing acquaintances at best afterward. She had him physically removed from the schoolhouse two weeks before because of his noisy, obnoxious behavior. It was apparent Inga wanted nothing to do with him.

Like all old-time papers, the Des Moines Register told readers, Inga “was saved from a worse fate by the sacrifice of her life.”

Better dead than molested.

Isaac Finkelstein Murder in Des Moines, Iowa 1902

 Isaac Finkelstein had been on a one-man crusade for years, trying to shut down Des Moines’ gambling parlors. Not so much on moral grounds, but because the city wasn’t getting a cut of the take. Eight gambling dens ran wide open, and the city wasn’t making any money from them. Finkelstein had a problem with that, and better yet, he had a plan to change it.

He tipped off the police about three gambling joints. That single complaint led to fifty-one arrests, the seizure of $900 in cash, and the destruction of $2,000 worth of gambling equipment. Not bad for a night’s work.

As expected, Finkelstein made a few enemies, so it wasn’t a big surprise when he turned up dead in an alley on the evening of August 5, 1902.

Pearl Hart Arizona's Woman Bandit

 

Cosmopolitan Magazine created the legend that was Pearl Hart in an article they published in October 1899.

They said the lady bandit “directed the affair. The woman held a revolver in one hand, the muzzle of the weapon looking threateningly, now on one person and now on another. The woman was in a man’s garment, and in the moonlight, her slender (read between the lines: sexy) figure and the masses of hair escaping from beneath the broad sombrero were plainly discernible.” 

It was a story that was too good to ignore. 

Within a few days, papers from all over the country borrowed quotes from the article, telling readers about the brash, cigar-smoking, hard-drinking “lady bandit” who masterminded the daring daylight stage robbery.

Pearl told readers she came from a good home and had attended a private boarding school, but she hooked up with a fast-talking conman and gambler at the tender young age of sixteen. “Marriage to me was but a name,” she said. “We ran away one night and were married.”

Mary Surratt - Lincoln Conspirator

 

Mary Surratt ran a boardinghouse on H Street in the District where the conspirators often met. Her husband died suddenly in 1862. Her son Isaac traveled south to Texas in 1861 to join the Confederate Army before the war. Her other son, John Surratt, stayed in Maryland, where he became a member of the Confederate Secret Service.

From the day she was arrested, it has been argued to death whether she was an innocent bystander or had knowledge of the plots to kidnap and assassinate Lincoln. Others argue Mary Surratt, not John Wilkes Booth, was the mastermind behind the entire conspiracy.

It would be hard to say Mary Surratt was innocent based on the evidence. The conspirators frequently met at her boarding house. Early on the day of the assassination, she rode to Surrattsville and left a package for Booth with John Lloyd. John Wilkes Booth visited her three times that day, the last, just an hour before the assassination.

She had to suspect something terrible was about to happen. But, more likely, Mary Surratt knew about Booth’s plan and kept the information to herself rather than alert the authorities.

 

Lewis Payne (Powell) - Lincoln Conspirator

 

Lewis Payne (Powell) was just sixteen when he enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861. He fought in the Peninsular Campaign, the battles of Chancellorsville and Antietam, and then Gettysburg. Unfortunately, he took a bullet during the charge upon the Federal center at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. 

He was taken prisoner and made a nurse in a Union hospital in Pennsylvania. Not long after that, he transferred to another hospital on Pratt Street in Baltimore. He deserted in October 1863 and rejoined the Confederate cavalry at Fauquier. He deserted again in January 1865 and made his way back to Baltimore. It was there he renewed his acquaintance with John Wilkes Booth.

Payne said he was recruited in a plot to kidnap the president. He was “acting under orders of his government” and still considered himself a Confederate soldier. Even though what he did now appears “foolish and wicked,” he “thought he was right then.” Payne was a realist. When sentenced to die, he told reporters he did not fear death. It would “end the terrible life he had been living this past four years.”[i]

 

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[i] Burlington Free Press. July 14, 1865.

George Atzerodt - Lincoln Conspirator

 

George Atzerodt was a thirty-three-year-old German immigrant. He was short and stubby, with thick, rounded shoulders. He had “brown hair, a light-colored mustache, and unpleasant green eyes.”^[i] He worked as a blockade runner in Port Tobacco, Maryland. Booth and John Surratt recruited him to ferry them across the Potomac after capturing Lincoln. Booth never gave him any money. Instead, he told him if they were successful, he should want nothing.[ii]

“I am one of the party who agreed to capture the President of the United States,” Atzerodt told the court. “But I am not one of the party to kill the President of the United States, or any member of the Cabinet, or General Grant, or Vice President Johnson. The first plot to capture failed, the second to kill I broke away from the moment I heard of it.”[iii]

He met with Booth and Payne at Herndon House at 8 p.m. on April 14. Booth said he would take care of Lincoln and Grant. Lewis Payne would kill William Seward. Atzerodt was supposed to take care of Vice President Andrew Johnson.

Atzerodt said he would not do it. Booth hollered and told him he was a damn fool. “He would be hung anyhow, and it was death for every man that backed out.”[iv]

After the meeting broke up, Atzerodt wandered the streets until about 2 a.m. Then he went to Kimmel House. The next day, he pawned his pistol at Georgetown and went to stay with his cousin in Montgomery County. He was arrested there on April 19.

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[i] Evening Star. July 7, 1865.

[ii] Burlington Free Press. July 14, 1865.

[iii] Evening Star. July 7, 1865.

[iv] Evening Star. July 7, 1865.

David Herold - Lincoln Conspirator

 

David Herold was just twenty-one and averse to performing any type of manual labor. He loved dogs, horses, guns and was never without something to boast about. Closer to the assassination, when he was drinking more, he hinted he would soon be rich and famous.

Herold attended Charlotte Hall Academy with John Surratt. When they met again in 1864, Surratt introduced him to John Wilkes Booth.

They recruited Herold because he knew the roads and paths in lower Maryland like the back of his hand and could easily guide the conspirators to safety.

Herold testified he was okay with the original plot to kidnap Lincoln. When the talk turned to murder, he backed out of it. He told Booth he would not disclose his “terrible secret.” He would keep his part of the bargain and help Booth escape through southern Maryland.

On the night of the assassination, Herold led Payne to Seward’s mansion. He waited outside to watch the horses while Payne went inside to perform his ghastly deed. When he heard a commotion coming from inside the house, Herold rode off and left Payne on his own to make his escape.

At the trial, Herold’s attorney, Frederick Stone, tried to show Herold had the mentality of an eleven-year-old.[i] That caused many reporters to describe him as simple-minded or half-witted, but that was far from the truth. David Herold had a good education. He studied pharmacy at Georgetown College. After graduation, he worked as a pharmacy assistant at several drug stores in the Washington area.

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[i] Pittman, Ben. President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators. 1865. P. 274. “Who is Herold, and what does the testimony disclose him to be? A weak, cowardly, foolish, miserable boy. On this point there is no conflict. Dr. McKim, who probably knew him best, and in whose employ he had been, declared his mind was that of a boy of elven years of age, although his age actually was about 22 – not naturally visicous, but weak, light, trifling, easily persuaded, good tempered, ready to laugh, and applaud, and ready to do the bidding of those around him. Such a boy was only wax in the hands of a man like Booth.”

John Surratt - Lincoln Conspirator

 John H. Surratt was a member of the Confederate Secret Service. In 1863, he became a messenger for the Confederacy, carrying secret messages to boats on the Potomac River. Some of that information included troop movements around Washington.

Most accounts of the conspiracy say Dr. Samuel Mudd introduced Surratt to Booth on December 23, 1864. However, in 1898, Surratt told George Alfred Townsend, Dr. Mudd never introduced him to Booth. Instead, he had received “a letter of introduction from a valued and trusted friend.”[i]

From the very first, he looked on Booth as a “hot-headed, visionary man.” His “wild scheme” of kidnapping Abraham Lincoln made him laugh in Booth’s face. Booth was eager to draw him into the conspiracy because he “knew every crossroad, bypath, and hiding place in northern Virginia and southern Maryland.”

“Booth said he was willing to take any chance,” said Surratt. “I believe he was a monomaniac on the subject. John Wilkes Booth had brooded over the South’s wrongs so much that his mind was unsettled on the subject...He was unquestionably insane when he shot Lincoln. No man in his right mind would have done that. [John Wilkes Booth] was the South’s worst enemy.”[ii]

John Surratt’s whereabouts on the night of the assassination have been hotly debated for over one-hundred and fifty years. He claimed to be in Elmira, New York, conducting business for the Confederate Secret Service. When he learned about the assassination, Surratt fled to Canada and Rome, becoming a member of the Papal Guard. He was later captured in Alexandria, Egypt, and returned to the United States in 1867. The Government tried John Surratt in a civil court and dropped all charges against him, making Surratt the only conspirator to escape prosecution.

The newspapers summed it up best. “Many thousands of dollars must have been expended to bring about the capture of John Surratt, but now having obtained his body, the authorities seemed totally at a loss to know what they should do with him. Since it was far from certain that John Surratt was guilty, the most generous and politic course was to let him have the benefit of the doubt.”[iii]

 

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[i] Evening Star. July 7, 1865.

[ii] Semi-Weekly Messenger. April 19, 1898.

[iii] Public Ledger. November 17, 1868.

John Wilkes Booth - Assassin

 John Wilkes Booth was the perfect assassin. He was charming, well-mannered, and striking in his appearance. If Booth did not exist, it would be necessary to make him up.[i] His sister, Asia, remembered John Wilkes singing one of his favorite tunes, in 1865 When Lincoln Shall be King.[ii] Booth sincerely believed when the war ended, Abraham Lincoln would proclaim himself emperor of the United States.

Since the beginning of the war, he blamed the South’s troubles on Abraham Lincoln. Then, as the war dragged on, he felt the need to do something—maybe kidnap or kill Lincoln.

The attack at Ford’s Theatre was not the first time Booth contemplated murdering President Lincoln. On August 13, 1864, he played an engagement in Meadville, Pennsylvania. When he checked out of the McHenry House, employees found a large inscription scratched in the window. “Abe Lincoln departed this life Aug. 13th, 1864, by the effects of poison.” 

No one thought much about it at the time. After the assassination, the windowpane was removed from the building. It was framed against a black background next to Booth’s signature cut from the desk log. It now belongs to the War Department.[iii]

While not an actual assassination attempt, it shows Booth contemplated murdering the President as much as eight months before he pulled the trigger at Ford’s Theatre. This occurred at the same time he was assembling his kidnap team. Did Booth plan to kill Lincoln all along? No one will ever know, but it is a real possibility.