Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin coined the term “Team of Rivals” to describe President Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, but that was not the only team that Lincoln employed during the Civil War—virtually unknown was his “Team of Mediums.” While it is well known that Mary Lincoln frequently attended Spiritualist séances while living in the White House, historians have insisted that President Lincoln only attended a few séances in an attempt to humor and protect his mentally unstable wife. This narrative is incorrect. Following the death of their beloved son Willie President Abraham Lincoln and his wife became actively involved in the Spiritualist movement and formed friendships with the trance medium Nettie Colburn. Born in upstate New York in 1841 Nettie Colburn first discovered that she was a Spiritualist medium following a childhood illness. Having developed her talent as trance medium, Nettie left home and traveled the country as a successful Spiritualist lecturer, one of the fe...

Cast: James McAvoy as Frederick Aiken Robin Wright as Mary Surratt Evan Rachel Wood as Anna Surratt John Simmons as John Surratt. Toby Kebbell as John Wilkes Booth Tom Wilkinson as Reverdy Johnson, Norman Reedus as Lewis Payne Kevin Kline as Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s secretary of war. Danny Huston as Joseph Holt, the prosecuting attorney. Stephen Root as John W. Lloyd Jonathan Groff as Louis Weichmann Colm Meaney as Maj. Gen. David Hunter Synopsis: In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, eight people are arrested and charged with conspiring to kill the President, Vice President, and Secretary of State. The lone woman charged, Mary Surratt (Robin Wright) owns a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth (Toby Kebbell) and others met and planned the simultaneous attacks. Against the ominous back-drop of post-Civil War Washington, Senator Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) who was supposed to defend Mary asks his colleague, the newly-minted lawyer Frederic...

You may not recognize her name but in 1865 everyone knew who Mary Surratt was. She was the only woman implicated in Lincoln’s assassination, and the first woman to be executed by the United States government. But questions still remain as to how much of a role Mary actually played in the conspiracy or if she played a part at all. Was she the “mother of all conspirators,” as the papers claimed? Or was she an innocent woman who was railroaded by the government in their rush to justice? Mary Surratt was born Mary Jenkins in Waterloo, MD in 1823. She grew up around slavery and accepted it as a way of life. Her parents were slave-owners, owning a modest plantation, although her father passed away when she just two years old, leaving her mother to pick up the pieces as best she could. Elizabeth Jenkins didn’t remarry, instead she became a competent manager of the properties that her husband left, actually expanding the holdings considerably. When Mary was sixteen she met John Surratt, who ...