Germantown, Maryland

====Assassination of Abraham Lincoln====
In 1865, [[George Atzerodt]], a co-conspirator in the [[assassination of Abraham Lincoln|assassination]] of [[President of the United States|U.S. President]] [[Abraham Lincoln]], was captured in Germantown. Atzerodt had come to the town with his family from Prussia when he was about nine years old. About five years later, his father moved the family to [[Virginia]], but Atzerodt still had many friends and relatives in Germantown.<ref name="American Brutus"/> He was living in Port Tobacco during the Civil War, and supplementing his meager income as a carriage painter by smuggling people across the Potomac River in a rowboat. This clandestine occupation brought him into contact with [[John Surratt]] and [[John Wilkes Booth]] and he was drawn into a plot to kidnap President Lincoln. On April 14, 1865, Booth gave Atzerodt a gun and told him that he was to kill [[Vice President of the United States|U.S. Vice President]] [[Andrew Johnson]], which he refused to do.<ref name="American Brutus"/> When he found out that Booth had shot Lincoln, Atzerodt panicked and fled to the Germantown farm of his cousin Hartman Richter, on Schaeffer Road near Clopper Road. He was discovered there by soldiers on April 20, six days after the assassination. Atzerodt was tried, convicted and [[Hanging|hanged]] on July 7, 1865, along with co-conspirators [[Mary Surratt]], [[Lewis Powell (assassin)|Lewis Powell]], and [[David Herold]] at [[Washington, D.C.]]'s [[Fort Lesley J. McNair|Fort McNair]].<ref name="American Brutus">{{cite book|last=Kauffman|first=M.|title=American Brutus|year=2004|publisher=Random House|isbn=0-375-75974-3|pages=282–284}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.germantownmdhistory.org/?q=node/2|author=Germantown Historical Society|work=Germantown Historical Society|title=Germantown's History, A Brief Overview}}</ref><ref>"George Atzerodt: The Reluctant Assassin," The Montgomery County Story, Montgomery County Historical Society, Vol. 58 No. 1, summer 2015</ref>