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Shown here by the Tortugas Harbor Lighthouse in a February, 1975 visit to Fort Jefferson, which is located in the lower part of the Florida Keys, are Dr. Richard D. Mudd and his grandson Samuel Mudd who were visiting the site where Dr. Samuel A. Mudd had been held as a prisoner from 1865 to 1869 after having been found guilty as a conspirator in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. At his Maryland home, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd had attended to the injuries of John Wilkes Booth who was Lincoln’s assassin.
The Garden Key Light Station, which was its original name, was established here in 1825. The first tower stood until 1876 when it was replaced on April 5th of that year by the tower that stands there today. In 1858 the name of the Garden Key Lighthouse was changed to the Tortugas Harbor Lighthouse when the nearby Loggerhead Key Lighthouse was completed.
Because of its location, it is also commonly known as the Fort Jefferson Lighthouse. It took 16 million bricks to build the 45-foot high walls of the six-sided fort that is America’s largest 19th century coastal fort; it became known as the Gibraltar of the Gulf. During the American War Between the States, when bricks could no longer be obtained from the south, the Union brought in bricks from Maine to try to complete the fort. The original lighthouse stood on the grounds of the fort. However, its replacement was built on a parapet of the fort. You will notice in the photo that the Mudds are resting their hands on one of the original cannons that are still in place at the fort.
At the time of this 1975 visit, the cast iron hexagonal lighthouse tower was in a sad state of disrepair. We wonder if the Mudd family realized that, while touring the lighthouse, this was not the same lighthouse that stood there during the time when Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was being housed at the fort as a prisoner.
Dr. Richard D. Mudd, the grandson of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, spent most of his adult life waging a campaign to clear his grandfather of complicity in the assassination of President Lincoln. He passed away in 2002 at the age of 103 having never fully realizing his dream. Dr. Samuel A Mudd’s life was the subject of the 1936 John Ford film, The Prisoner of Shark Island and, in more recent times, the 1980 movie, The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd that starred Dennis Weaver.
This story appeared in the
Mar/Apr 2014 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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