On November 13, 1864, at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was introduced to John Wilkes Booth, who had come to Charles County to contact the Confederate underground and recruit men to help him kidnap President Abraham Lincoln. Sarah Mudd later recalled that John Thompson of Baltimore introduced Booth to her husband at Bryantown Church, after which Booth came to the Mudd home that evening to inquire about buying a riding horse from a neighboring property, walked with Dr. Mudd to Squire George Gardener’s the next morning, then returned for his overcoat and rode away, and the horse he purchased was sent to him at Bryantown that evening. Booth and Mudd met several more times before Dr. Mudd set Booth’s broken leg at his home on April 15, 1865. Dr. Mudd and his wife, Sarah Frances Dyer Mudd, are buried in the church cemetery along with several Mudd and Dyer relatives. Dr. Mudd was born on December 20, 1833, and died on January 10, 1883; his wife was born on March 15, 1835, and died on December 29, 1911. The center part of St. Mary’s Church was built in 1846, enlarged in the 1890’s to its present form, and its rectory was gutted by fire in 1866, rebuilt, then torn down in the mid 1950’s and replaced with the current brick rectory.