Evening star., 1935-04-14
Remembers Booths Flight
"Aunt Maria" Simms, Daughter of Slave,
Has Seen Capital Grow.
BY FRANK L. CARTER, JR.

She Is the daughter of a former
slave in Maryland's Prince Georges
County, and 10 years ago today she
was an eyewitness to the escape of
the man who shot Abraham Lincoln.
Aunt Maria" Simms, we'll past 80
now, and on Federal relief, can't
rightly" remember her age, but she
recalls the events OF that tragic April
IA, 1865, as though they were yester-
| day.
! Fresh from the Maryland planta-
I tion where she had been freed when
she was 10 year old, Aunt Maria be-
came a maids helper at one of the
houses that faced on street, and
settled in the servants quarters in
Baptist's alley opposite the Ford
Theater
Saw Flight Begin.
Here it was that she heard the fatal
shot and saw the beginning of the
wild fight of John Wilkes Booth fol-
lowing the murder of the emancipa-
! tor OF her race. For in this alley Booth
had his horse waiting.
To this and the exciting scenes
that followed, Aunt Maria, then
called "Topsy," was an eyewitness.
She viewed them from the porch
overlooking the alley where she and
three of her brothers and sisters
slept.
Shortly after dusk they had been
sent to bed, but were wide awake
listening to the music and the hum
of voices from the theater when the
crack of a pistol reached her ears.
She thought it was part of the play
at first, she says. But almost i'm
mediately thereafter she heard a COM
motion in the alley and peeked over
the rail in time to see Booth fell
the young lad who was holding his
horse, mount it and dash away.
The remainder of the night. ac-
cording to Aunt Maria, the young
servant children crouched in their
beds listening to the tramp of march,
| ing feet, the sound of musket fire
and the excited questioning voices
| that filled the alley
Recalls Old Scenes.
| All this and more was refreshed in
! Aunt Maria's memory the other day
| when she walked down Tenth street
! to view the new Government build
ings on the Avenue.
| Downtown Washington is hardly
recognizable to her now, for she first
saw the District when its streets were
"a cloud of dust in Summer and a
mire of mud in Winter"
Today Aunt Maria is as spry as
many women scores of years younger.
Not quite feet high and with gray
white hair. she faces the world with a
/ happy mien, though she says times are
hard and she must rely on the Fed
eral Government for subsistence.
| Before the Civil War she was a
housemaid in the big house" on a
plantation in Prince Georges County.
She is the daughter of Adam Simms
and a granddaughter of Lucinda
Green, who were both slaves of a
/ family in nearby Maryland.
When the War Between the States
started Aunt Maria's master freed her
! and all Of his slaves. Her grandmother
| then brought her to Washington with
her brothers and sisters, where at first
they lived on "the iSland"-noW South
west Washington-which was sep
arated from the rest of the District by
a canal
Several years later Aunt Maria with
her kinfolk became servants for the
Davis family, which lived on E street
between Ninth and Tenth. 1t was
while she worked there that she wit
messed the events following Lincoln's
death.
Coal Oil Lamps.