The story of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination is well known. What’s less known is the role this Chinese restaurant played in the saga.
What today is Wok and Roll, a mediocre restaurant in Chinatown, was once a boarding house owned by Mary Surratt. Surratt was a rebel sympathizer and, according to the military tribunal that tried the assassination conspirators, Surratt met regularly here with actor and assassin John Wilkes Booth and his gang which included George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell, and David Herald.
It was here that Booth arranged for Surratt to deliver field glasses and guns to a tavern she owned in Maryland to be used by Booth and Herald during their escape.
Three days after the assassination, the DC police show up here wanting to take Surratt down to the station for further questioning. Just before they’re about to leave, Lewis Powell, who’s on the run, shows up looking for a place to hide. Powell tells police that he’s a ditch digger who came by to inquire about some work. They don’t buy it and arrest him too.
All four were convicted and hanged at Washington Arsenal which today is Ft. McNair. Surratt was the first woman executed by the federal government. She was buried near the gallows. Four years later her daughter received government approval to move her body to DC’s Mt. Olivet cemetery.
The night of her execution a mob attacked the house and took souvenirs until the police stopped them. Surratt’s daughter sold the house and over the years it was a tea shop, grocery store, and a store front that sold liquor during probation. There is a marker on the front but it’s not an official historic site.
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