Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Guess who this grave marker is for? I just found out today that he is buried nearby, in Geneva, so we went out there (about 22 miles away) and visited the site. No body there, just his head.

Well, I'll be a ring-tailed coon!! (I know who the marker is for.)

That's a terrific find Stef. I only had a poor b/w photo of the stone. THANK YOU!

He was one of the followers of John Wilkes Booth in the Lincoln assassination. AKA Lewis Paine, Rev. Wood, etc., his job on the night of the assassination was to kill then Secretaty of State Seward. His attempt failed and he was subsequently captured. This photo shows him in shackles aboard a gunboat:



He was hung along with Mary Surratt, David Herold and George Atzerodt on July 7, 1865

Harry...didn't they bury the bodies (at least temporarily) there at Old Capitol Prison? I know there's a photo of the four condemned walking past fresh open graves - one of several made on the 7th of July....
If his head's in Florida...I wonder where the rest got to?

(I've actually found most of the information I wondered about within the last few moments. It does aggravate me though, I've been by Ft. McNair a few times, and never had a clue that it was the site of Old Capitol Prison!)

Yes Doug, they were secretly buried beneath the floor at the prison.

Powell, more often referred to as Paine in the history books, was the son of a Baptist minister whose congregation was in Live Oak Station, FL. He joined the Confederate army at 16 and was wounded and captured at Gettysburg, being part of Pickett's charge.

That is the first I heard of only his head being buried. One more mystery to look into.

I got the info about the head grave from Sarah Vowell's new book ASSASSINATION VACATION. She visits all the sites from LIncoln, Garfield, and McKinley. She even took a very rocky boat trip to the Dry Tortugas to see the prison. It is really, really good!

Powell's skull was discovered at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in 1992. They "deaccessioned" it in 1994 and gave it to Powell's great-niece in Florida. They almost gave the rights to the skull to a woman who claimed to be Powell's great-granddaughter, a Canadian woman who said tha her great-grandmother was pregnant with Powell's illegitimate child when he was executed. She wanted the Smithsonian to keep the skull. But she backed off and they ended up giving it to the great-niece who buried it next to Powell's mother as she had promised.

The "just the head" aspect of it makes me think of General Dan Sickles, who lost part of a leg at Gettysburg. For some (very odd) reason, he ordered that the remains of the limb be preserved and sent to the Army Medical Museum in Washington - and made fairly regular visits to the "dearly departed" for some fifty years...