In a quiet Baltimore cemetery, a small blank headstone is covered in pennies, and every one of them carries a message. After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in April 1865, John Wilkes Booth fled through Maryland and into Virginia before he was finally cornered on a farm. Years later, in 1869, his remains were released to his family and laid to rest in the Booth family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, the city where he grew up. But his family made a deliberate choice. His brother Edwin, one of the most famous actors of the era, feared that a proper headstone would draw unwanted attention and vandalism. So John Wilkes Booth's grave was left unmarked. Today, nobody knows the exact spot where he rests within the family plot, which is easy to find thanks to his father's towering obelisk. Visitors gather at a small, plain white stone nearby that's widely believed to mark his grave, though some historians say it may actually belong to his sister Asia. That hasn't stopped one of the most fitting traditions in American history. Instead of flowers, people leave Lincoln pennies on the stone. Since Lincoln's profile appears on every penny, the gesture is meant to give the 16th president the final word over the man who took him from the nation. Some visitors even place the coins so Lincoln faces down, as if keeping watch over Booth forever.
Green Mount is also home to Maryland governors, Civil War generals, and Johns Hopkins himself, but few spots draw as much curiosity as this one small stone. More than 160 years later, people are still making sure history remembers who truly won.
Now THAT is subtle. We do like subtle, don't we?
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