She owned the house where they planned the murders, and her brother was one of the conspirators.............
I found this enlightening about Mary Surratt:
https://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/lincolnconspiracy/surrattm.html
I’m a student of the assassination. Mary surratt was guilty as sin and she had it coming.
It was her son, not her brother, who was one of the conspirators, but he was away in Canada in a mission for the confederate spy agency. They conspirators met repeatedly at her boarding house. She facilitated Booth’s abortive retrieval of guns after the assassination at the family-owned inn in Surrattsville, MD. A couple days after the assassination she was being interrogated at the house by an army officer when who should stumble in but Lewis Powell, who unsuccessfully tried to assassinate Secretary of State Seward. He didn’t know DC and had slept in trees for a couple nights to evade the dragnet. She falsely claimed she didn’t know him. A prime conspirator? No, but she knew what was going to go down. An early example of FAFO. But a minister thoughtfully held a parasol over her head to protect her from the sun while she was on the scaffold waiting to be hanged, so that’s nice
I was recently in DC. I always go to Ford’s Theater and Peterson House where Lincoln died. I find them to still be incredibly somber places
But for this trip I also learned that the boardinghouse still stands, though it is now a Chinese restaurant and karaoke bar (!) named “Wok n’ Roll.” Little or no of the historic interior remains. Historically the main entrance was on the second floor. The stairs are gone, the door converted into a window, and the entrance is on the first floor. From years of having my palate degraded by Panda Express, I can tell you that the Chinese food was excellent! I highly recommend it for anyone going to DC