Guarding Lincoln’s Conspirators

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February 28, 2013
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Ed Isaacs is a former Norwalk firefighter who retired in 2009. Luckily for him, he found something to keep busy almost right away.

“When you can put a face on somebody, it makes it more interesting,” he says.

Put a face to his great great grandfather, George Dixon. Dixon was a soldier during the Civil War who stood guard over the Abraham Lincoln assassination conspirators while they were being tried.

“[It tells how] he was guarding the conspirators, and how he saw the bullet that killed the president,” he says. “The pistol, two carbines, a photograph of John Wilkes Booth”

Dixon’s daughter was Isaacs’ great grandmother. In 2009, through a Dixon family member in Maine, Isaacs got his hands on Dixon’s diary, which he kept during the conspirator trials in 1865.

“The names on [the page 27 of the diary] are the guards that were watching the conspirators, the numbers of the cells they were watching,” Isaacs says. “And Dixon says the last four names were the executioners.”

Isaacs also says the diary shows that when Mary Suratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold and George Atzerodt were hanged, they each had 2 guards, not just 1. It is a rare artifact that tells part of what happened during the trials.

Isaacs says the diary is a “small thing, but big to historians.”

So much so that Dixon’s diary has been featured by National Geographic, the History Channel and books about Lincoln’s assassination.

“For me it’s another way to promote Dixon,” Isaacs says. “The more people I meet, the more people I interact with, the more people invite me places.”

And that’s what it comes down to for Isaacs: showcasing the bit of history his family tree has a part in. That’s a mantle he hopes his two children can also take up some day.

“Someday hopefully they’ll pick this up, too, and realize how important family history is,” he says. “Everyone , anyone should look up their family history. They’re something important in everyone’s life.

You just have to find it.”

Produced By: Mike Peal
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