A family connection to Fort McNair’s historic courtroom

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES

12.27.2018

Story by Leah Rubalcaba 

Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall

Ed and Mary Beth Isaacs, from Norwalk, Connecticut, made a special trip to visit the courtroom at Fort McNair’s Grant Hall during the public open house held Nov. 3. Isaacs has a special connection to the courtroom and the proceedings of the military tribunal held there in 1865 to try those who conspired to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln.
Isaacs’ great, great grandfather, George E. Dixon, was a prison guard on duty at Washington’s Federal Penitentiary during the time of the trial and was assigned to watch the prisoners being tried for the assassination.
Fort McNair’s Grant Hall, also known as Building 20, was once a part of the massive structure that was the federal city of Washington’s penitentiary, built in 1829. The penitentiary was built on the peninsula that is now Fort McNair, just north of the Washington Arsenal, the Army post built at the tip of the peninsula in 1791 to protect Washington from enemies coming up the Potomac River.
During the Civil War, the penitentiary was used to hold Confederate prisoners. After the war and after Lincoln’s assassination, the penitentiary is where eight individuals, who were thought to have conspired to assassinate the president, were imprisoned and eventually tried by military tribunal.
As history shows, the tribunal courtroom was built on the penitentiary’s third floor – in the section of the building that is now Grant Hall. The tribunal lasted just shy of two months. It began May 9, 1865, the verdicts were read on June 30, and the executions took place July 7 on gallows built in the penitentiary courtyard next to the building. The conspirators who were convicted and hanged were Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt and David Herald. Samuel Arnold, Dr. Samuel Mudd and Michael O’Laughlen received life sentences, and Edmund Spangler was sentenced to six years in prison.
Following the trial and executions and with the decline in activity at the penitentiary, the complex was demolished with the exception of the section of the building that remains today – the section that notably housed the courtroom on the third floor. The interior of the building was gutted and rebuild into many iterations over the years, from offices to quarters for military families.
A congressionally funded restoration of the building from 2009 to 2012 – with the use of historical preservation funds – restored the courtroom to how it appeared on the third floor of the building during the military tribunal.
These series of events allowed Isaacs to return to the place where his grandfather stood guard over prisoners in 1865. In yet another twist of fate – just as the courtroom was restored after having not existed for over one-hundred and thirty years – Isaacs only recently found an important artifact that tied his great, great grandfather to the military tribunal.
Isaacs knew of the history of his great, great grandfather Dixon from his own father, Howard R. Isaacs, who collected family photos and artifacts – to include Dixon’s promotion certificate to sergeant, two service medals and newspaper clippings.
Dixon was born in Pound Ridge, N.Y. on Dec. 2, 1834, and enlisted as a private in the 172nd Infantry Regiment, New York, on Sept. 6, 1862. He fought in many battles during the Civil War and was wounded twice. He was honorably discharged July 31, 1865. Just before his discharge, he was a sergeant in Company C of the 14th Regiment Veterans Corps, a unit assigned to Washington’s Federal Penitentiary to guard the prisoners during the Lincoln assassination trial. Of note, Dixon kept a diary chronicling parts of the trial and execution.
Dixon passed away in 1925 at the age of 90. One of the newspaper clippings saved by Isaacs’ father was Dixon’s obituary that described him as an eye witness to the execution of four of the Lincoln assassination conspirators. The obituary credited Dixon’s diary for the information about the execution, but the Isaacs family did not know the whereabouts of the diary.
After his father’s death and with a desire to honor him, Isaacs began looking into his own family history with searches on Ancestory.com by using the names written on the backs of photos his father had saved. One name in particular – Floyd E. Dixon – led him to a cousin in Maine – Pamila Dixon Tift. George E. Dixon was her great, great grandfather as well.
After their initial telephone conversation, Isaacs sent his newly found cousin a copy of Dixon’s obituary that mentioned the soldier’s diary. Soon Tift called to say she had the diary. Isaacs describes that moment as “life-changing – I nearly fell out of my chair.”
In conversations with Tift over the next several weeks, he shared the importance of having Dixon’s diary together with other artifacts at Dixon’s home town of Pound Ridge. Tift agreed and she mailed the diary to Isaacs.
With Dixon’s diary in hand, Isaacs visited the courtroom at Grant Hall Nov. 3 and shared an excerpt from page 18 of the book. On May 16, 1865, Dixon wrote, “On guard at the old Penitentiary at Washington over the Booth party conspirators. I was in the court room during the day while the witnesses were being examined. I saw the bullet that killed the President, also the pistol and 2 carbines. Booths photograph and the boot that was cut open to take it from his broken leg by Dr. Mudd.”
One of the historians at the courtroom during the open house was Bob Bowser, a docent at the Dr. Samuel A. Mudd House Museum who regularly re-enacts Dr. Mudd at the Grant Hall courtroom public open houses. As Dr. Mudd, Bowser sat in the courtroom prisoners’ docket with shackles on his hands and feet, as the prisoners were made to wear during the trial. Isaacs took the opportunity to sit next to Bowser, as his great, great grandfather may have sat between prisoners in 1865. During the military tribunal, prison guards would sit in the prisoners’ docket between each prisoner, to keep the prisoners apart.
Bowser, along with other historians who volunteered for the Nov. 3 open house, were thrilled to view Dixon’s diary and didn’t lose sight of the fact that the diary was back in the courtroom where it had originally been in 1865 – one hundred and fifty-three years earlier.
Another stunning entry in Dixon’s diary was on page 27, when on July 7, 1865, he wrote about how he and the soldiers from his company were on duty during the execution of the four sentenced to be hanged. “On guard at the Penitentiary. The execution of Mrs. Surratt, Payne, Atzerodt and Herold,” wrote Dixon. He also painstakingly listed all the names of the “2nd Relief Guard,” on duty that day to include the prison cell numbers of the inmates for which they were responsible. Dixon also made a side note on the page stating that the last four names on the list served as “executioners” that day.
Isaacs said he was extremely pleased with his visit and that he especially enjoyed his time visiting with “Dr. Mudd.”
The Grant Hall courtroom public open houses are held quarterly on the first Saturday of the second month of each quarter. During a calendar year, those months are February, May, August and November. The next open houses are scheduled for Feb. 2, May 4, Aug. 3, and Nov. 2 in 2019. Open House hours are 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. For more information, visit the Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall Facebook events page at https://www.facebook.com/pg/jbmhh/events/.

• Date Taken: 12.27.2018
• Date Posted: 12.27.2018 13:30
• Story ID: 305361
• Location: WASHINGTON, DC, US