[Deathwatch] Richard D. Mudd, grandson of the doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth, 101

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Richard D. Mudd, grandson of the doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth,
dies at 101 
Tue May 21,11:15 AM ET 

SAGINAW, Michigan - Richard D. Mudd, who spent much of his life trying
to overturn his grandfather's conviction on charges of aiding U.S.
President Abraham Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, died early
Tuesday. He was 101.
  
Mudd died at home, his son told The Saginaw News.

Mudd, who retired in 1965 after 37 years as an industrial physician and
surgeon for General Motors Corp., traveled throughout the United States
on speaking engagements, many of them before Civil War historical
organizations.

He spent decades trying to clear the name of his grandfather, Dr.
Samuel A. Mudd, who treated Booth after the 1865 assassination of
President Lincoln at Washington's Ford Theater.

Richard Mudd was only a teen-ager when he happened on an account of his
grandfather's conviction for aiding and abetting conspirators in the
assassination.

Dr. Mudd was eventually pardoned for setting Booth's broken leg, but
his grandson was determined to exonerate him totally, and he died still
trying.

In July 1979, Richard Mudd's efforts brought a two-page, single-spaced
letter from President Jimmy Carter supporting Mudd's position on his
grandfather's innocence.

But Carter noted regrettably "he had been advised the findings of guilt
and the sentence of a military commission that tried Dr. Samuel Mudd
are binding and conclusive judgments and there is no authority under
the law, by which, I, as president, could set aside his conviction."

In December 1987, Mudd received a note from President Ronald Reagan
(news - web sites) that also lamented that the law precluded changing
convictions from the military court.

"In my efforts to help," Reagan wrote, "I came to believe as you do
that Dr. Samuel Mudd was indeed innocent of any wrongdoing."

Richard Mudd was born Jan. 24, 1901, in Washington, D.C. He received a
bachelor's degree from Georgetown University in 1921 and a master's of
art degree in 1922.

He got a medical degree from Georgetown in 1926 and completed his
residency at Ford Hospital in Detroit. He was named medical director
for Chevrolet Saginaw Grey Iron Foundry in 1936.

Mudd also wrote a dozen scientific papers and books, and it took him 22
years to write the 1,465-page "Mudd Family of the United States,"
published in 1951.

Survivors include two sons and four daughters.