John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, and his accomplice David E. Herold fled Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, for Southern Maryland, where Confederate sympathizers were skilled at evading Union surveillance. On April 20, Confederate signal agent Thomas A. Jones led them to Pope's Creek in Charles County, Maryland, about two and one-half miles upstream from Mathias Point, where he had hidden a rowboat. Jones showed them a course to Machodoc Creek in Virginia and to Mrs. Elizabeth R. Queensberry's house, but wind and current pushed them due west toward Mathias Point, and they rowed back to Maryland. On the night of April 22, they tried again, crossed the river to the eastern side of Mathias Point, then rowed south along the Virginia shore to Gambo Creek. Mrs. Queensberry fed them, and her neighbor Thomas Harbin escorted them farther on their attempted escape. Booth's death and Herold's surrender on April 26 at Richard H. Garnett's farm in Caroline County ended their flight. The Mathias Point peninsula was also thick with Confederate sympathizers during the war. On August 15, 1861, Acting Master William Budd took the gunboat USS Resolute to Mathias Point and then to Persimmon Point, where he spotted a grounded schooner and sent a small crew to take her off. Confederates fired from bushes on shore, killing three and wounding one before Budd drove them off and recovered the schooner. Earlier, in May 1861, Confederate forces began constructing a battery at Mathias Point to stop Federal vessels on the Potomac River from transporting supplies and troops to Washington, D.C. On June 27, Union Commander James H. Ward, aboard USS Thomas Freeborn, attacked the battery, which returned fire and killed Ward, the first U.S. naval officer killed in the war.