Site Visit Saturday: The grave of Lewis Powell, alias Paine, Geneva, Florida

 
 The war is full of interesting stories. (All of history is full of interesting stories.)  Cemeteries also provide many bizarre tales of the past. The lovely Geneva Community Cemetery in Geneva, Florida, hosts a part of one such story. The cemetery is well maintained and boasts many graves of veterans of various conflicts. There is some nice tombstone art displayed on some of the graves. However, one of the most unobtrusive markers helps to tell a truly strange story of history. Lewis Powell, a member of the 2^nd Florida Infantry and later, of Mosby’s Rangers, is buried in two different places. Of course, stories abound regarding strange partial burials. The two that come to mind are the burial of Stonewall Jackson’s arm at Locust Grove, and the case  of Dan Sickles (US), who lost a leg at Gettysburg and then proceeded to regularly visit the leg at the Army Medical Museum.

Lewis Powell (LOC)

   Lewis Powell was born in Randolph County, Alabama, in 1844. His father was a pastor who moved around, pastoring or starting churches in Georgia and Florida. The Powell family appears to have been living in Hamilton County, North Carolina, when Lewis enlisted on May 30, 1861. He was mustered in as a private in the Hamilton Blues. The Hamilton Blues became Company I, 2^nd Florida Infantry. The 2^nd Florida Infantry served in the Eastern Theater of the war, in Longstreet’s corps. Powell was wounded at Gettysburg – shot in the right wrist. He was captured and spent time in at the hospital at Pennsylvania College and at Camp Letterman. Later, he served as a nurse at various Federal hospitals in Baltimore, where, on September 7, he escaped.

   Powell did not return to the 2^nd Florida. Instead, he joined Mosby’s Rangers, earning the nickname of “Lewis the Terrible.” He participated in a number of engagements through 1864. Around the first of January 1865, Powell made his way to Richmond, then to Alexandria and into Union lines, using the alias, “Lewis Payne.” In Baltimore, he met David P. Parr, a Confederate agent. Powell went on to meet John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and Southern sympathizer. Booth was already planning to kidnap US President Abraham Lincoln and recruited Powell to help. Booth’s plan later changed to assassinating Lincoln. Powell’s role was to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward. On the night of April 14, Powell entered the Seward home in Washington, D.C., and attacked Seward in his bed. Powell was apprehended three days later at the Surratt boarding house and imprisoned, first on the USS Saugus, then at the Washington Arsenal.

   At the ensuing trial, Powell was found guilty and sentenced to death; he was executed with three others on July 7, 1865. The four, along with the body of Booth, were buried at the Washington Arsenal. They were moved in 1867 to another spot within the Arsenal grounds, and then in 1869, President Andrew Johnson agreed to turn the bodies over to the families. What actually happened to Powell’s body is not clear. It is possible it is buried in a mass grave at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C… except for his skull. In 1991, Powell’s skull was discovered at the Smithsonian Institution. It appears Powell’s skull was removed by A.H, Gawler in 1869 or 1870, and then donated to the Army Medical Museum in 1885. It was given to the Smithsonian on May 7, 1898. The Smithsonian found a great-niece, who claimed it, and two years later, his skull was buried next to the grave of his mother, Carolina Patience Powell, at the Geneva Cemetery in Seminole County, Florida.  If you visit the cemetery, you’ll find the marker, pictured here, near the stone dedicated to Powell’s mother. They are both located under a tree in a quiet spot that belies the strange nature of the partial burial here.   

Lewis Powell's grave in Florida.

   The literature surrounding the Lincoln Assassination is vast. For more information on Powell, check out Betty J. Ownsbey’s Alias “Paine”: Lewis Thornton Powell, the Mystery Man of the Lincoln Conspiracy (1993).

   I last visited this site in December 2020.