Deep Roots Family Tree Blog

When I start a family tree, I don’t really expect to find much. I started working on the Wadsworth/Groen/Maulsby tree to find Mauritz Groen, what his life might have looked like, and why he attempted to sell his children. I never imagined that following Mauritz’ family lineage back through the Maulsby’s and eventually ended up with Mauritz’ great grandparents, Philip Maulsby (b. 1835, d. 1875) and Maria O’Laughlen (b. 1834, d. 1905).

I started getting a little excited because I had a feeling that Maria and her ancestry would lead us to Ireland and I haven’t worked on many trees with Irish lineage. However, I ended up finding an Abraham Lincoln assassination conspirator. Yep. That’s right. Someone in my work-wife’s husbands (are you still with me?) family tree was part of the plot to kill Abe Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States.

So… Maria O’Laughlen’s brother, Michael O’Laughlen (b. 1840, d. 1867) was just that. His photo is below. 

Photo retrieved from and colorized using ancestry.com

Are you ready for this? I certainly wasn’t.

Michael O’Lauglen Jr. was born on the 3rd of June, 1840 in Baltimore,  Maryland to Michael O’Laughlen Sr. (b. 1804, d. 1843, reportedly from Ireland) and Mary Wehner (b. 1812, d. 1883, born in the US). Some records claim that he was born in Ireland, but that seems unlikely. 

There is a fantastic biography for Michael on findagrave.com written by Kit and Morgan Benson.

—————————————————

“Lincoln Assassination Conspirator. Although convicted by court, his role was not clear, although it may have been to kill Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he grew up on the same street as his childhood friend, John Wilkes Booth. Before the Civil War, he worked as a manufacturer of ornamental plaster. When the Civil War broke out, he hurried south to join the Confederate Army, and served until June 1862. After his discharge, he returned to Baltimore to work as a clerk in a family feed business. In the late summer of 1864, Booth recruited O’Laughlen in his plan to kidnap Lincoln, to hold Lincoln for exchange of Confederate prisoners. O’Laughlen attended the March 15, 1865 meeting at Gautier’s Restaurant in Washington DC, in which the conspirators finalized their plan to kidnap Lincoln, but when Lincoln suddenly changed his plans, the kidnap plot fell through. O’Laughlen would claim that he dropped out of the plot at the end of March, before the plot changed to kill Lincoln and his key cabinet members, but in mid-April he came to Washington DC, arriving the day before the assassination. O’Laughlen took a room at the National Hotel, where Booth also stayed. On the night of April 13, O’Laughlen visited the home of Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War, but was asked to leave, since Stanton was not seeing visitors that evening. On the morning of April 15, O’Laughlen returned to Baltimore. Arrested on April 17, O’Laughlen was charged with being an accomplice to Booth. He was found guilty of conspiracy, and was sentenced to life in prison. Three other conspirators, Dr. Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Edman Spangler were also given life, and all four were sent to Fort Jefferson, Florida, in the Dry Tortugas, to serve out their sentences. In September 1867, Yellow Fever broke out at the prison, and O’Laughlen died of it on September 23, 1867. On February 13, 1869, President Andrew Johnson issued an order that O’Laughlen’s body was to be turned over to his mother, and the body was shipped to Baltimore, where it was interned at Greenmount Cemetery.”

—————————————————-

The fact that Michael was a childhood friend of John Wilkes Booth blew my mind. We go from a man who wanted to sell his children (see previous post) to an Lincoln assassination co-conspirator all of in the same tree, following the same paternal line back to the early to mid 1800s. 

I thought I had found everything there was to find in this tree. Not only have I answered the question that brought me to this tree in the first place, I have managed to accurately trace back to colonial America (with some Ashkenazi Jew thrown in there), followed love stories and premature deaths, and I was able to find a book written by David Lee Maulsby (seen above in the clip of the family tree) to give to my co-worker and her husband. 

This is the most accomplished I’ve ever felt after working on a family tree and I have a feeling I’m just getting started. 

Current trees I’m working on:

Misemer (mine)

Wadsworth/Maulsby (work-wife)

Raby (epic co-worker)

Snyder (another co-worker)

Epperson (my partner)

Hopefully more posts to come.