Samuel Mudd - Early Years

Early Years

Born in Charles County, Maryland, Mudd was the fourth of ten children of Henry Lowe and Sarah Ann Reeves Mudd. He grew up on "Oak Hill", his father's tobacco plantation of several hundred acres which was located 30 miles (48 km) southeast of downtown Washington, D.C., and which was worked by 89 slaves.

At the age of 15, after several years of home tutoring, Mudd went off to boarding school at St. Johns in Frederick, Maryland. Two years later, he enrolled at Georgetown College in Washington, D.C.. He then studied medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, writing his thesis on dysentery.

Upon graduation in 1856, Mudd returned to Charles County to practice medicine, marrying his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Frances (Frankie) Dyer Mudd one year later. As a wedding present, Mudd's father gave the couple 218 acres (0.88 km2) of his best farmland, known as St. Catherine’s, and a new house. While the house was under construction, the young Mudds lived with Frankie's bachelor brother, Jeremiah Dyer, finally moving into their new home in 1859. They had nine children in all; four before Mudd's arrest and five after his release from prison. To supplement his income from his medical practice, Mudd became a small scale tobacco grower, using five slaves according to the 1860 U.S. Slave Census. Mudd believed that slavery was divinely ordained, writing a letter to the theologian Orestes Brownson to that effect.

With the advent of the American Civil War in 1861, the Southern Maryland slave system and the economy it supported rapidly began to collapse. In 1863, the Union Army established Camp Stanton just 10 miles (16 km) from the Mudd farm to enlist black freedmen and run-away slaves. Six regiments totaling over 8,700 black soldiers, many from Southern Maryland, were trained there. In 1864, Maryland, which was exempt from Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, abolished slavery, making it difficult for growers like Mudd to operate their plantations. As a result, Mudd considered selling his farm and depending on his medical practice. As Mudd pondered his alternatives, he was introduced to someone who said he might be interested in buying his property, a 26 year-old actor by the name of John Wilkes Booth.