After assassinating Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, John Wilkes Booth fled to southern Maryland, toward Zekiah Swamp. Booth entered the swamp after treatment by Dr. Samuel Mudd for the broken leg he suffered escaping Ford's Theater. A black tobacco farmer guided Booth and his co-conspirator David Herold through the swamp to the home of a Confederate sympathizer, Samuel Cox. Cox led Booth and Herold to Thomas A. Jones who helped them the rest of the way through the Zekiah Swamp and across the Potomac River to Virginia.