On this day 161 years ago, our 3rd cousin 4x removed, John M. Wiley, was riding with the 8th Illinois Cavalry through southern Maryland in search of John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators. Was he part of the squad who found them? Sort of.
First, a little background. John Wiley was born in Genesee County, New York, to James Cummings & Elizabeth (Corbett) Wylie on August 9, 1837. He was the second of the couple’s five children, one girl followed by four boys. Exactly when he headed west to Illinois is unclear; I haven’t yet found him on any 1860 Census, but he was a farmer living in Rockford, Illinois, when he enlisted in the infantry at nearby Marengo on January 5, 1864. The 26-year-old was described as 5 feet 4¾ inches tall with light complexion, blue eyes, and sandy brown hair. He reported for duty the following day and was sworn in as a private by the regiment’s provost marshal, Captain Coon, and was assigned to Company B.
Wiley was one of four relatives I found who served in this distinguished regiment, unofficially known as Farnsworth’s Abolitionist Regiment because of its enthusiastic antislavery soldiers. If any contraband (formerly enslaved individuals) found their way into camp, the 8th refused to return them to bondage. He joined this regiment later in the war, after the 8th had fought at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. But Wiley would fight at the battles of Cold Harbor, Monocacy, Fort Stevens, and Opequon, and was near Washington, DC, when President Lincoln was shot on April 14, 1865.
According to History of the Eighth Cavalry Regiment, Illinois Volunteers, During the Great Rebellion (Abner Hard):
Monday, April 17th, General Gamble received orders to proceed with his staff, the Eighth Illinois Cavalry, and the Sixteenth New York Cavalry to Washington, to attend the funeral and search for the assassin of President Lincoln. . . .
The funeral of Abraham Lincoln, probably one of the most imposing spectacles ever witnessed on this continent, took place on Wednesday the 19th of April 1865. The Brigade staff, the Sixteenth New York Cavalry and a detachment of the Eighth Cavalry took part in the ceremonies; and at night General Gamble and General Slough, with their respective staffs, took charge of the body in the rotunda of the Capitol. Next day the remains were taken by a special railroad train, via the principle cities of the North to Springfield, Illinois. The staff returned to Fairfax Court House; but detachments of the regiment were on duty in Maryland and Virginia for some time, their duty consisted of arresting smugglers and keeping order through the lower counties of Maryland.
The 8th Illinois Cavalry searched the lower peninsula for a week, without success. On April 25, Captain William Hazelton of Company A wrote about their dragnet in a letter to his wife:
I have been endeavoring to get an opportunity to write you but have been so constantly on the move for the last two weeks that I’ve had no chance to write.
We were first ordered to Washington to form part of the military escort at President Lincoln’s funeral, immediately after which we were sent here to Maryland in pursuit of Booth and some of his accomplices who were known to have come here. We traced Booth to the house of a Dr. Mudd where he went to have his leg set, a bone which had been broken by a fall off his horse [sic; it happened at Ford’s Theatre]. At this Doctor’s he arrived on the morning after the murder. He had with him a man by the name of Harrold [David Herold], one of the accomplices and a desperado well known in these parts. Here he remained until 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon of the same day. From here we were unable to trace him farther for some days. In vain we scoured the country in all directions. I was out with my company night and day. With us were some of the most expert detectives of the United States, but all our efforts to trace him further failed until at length a free negro came in and reported that he acted as a guide for them in the house of a Captain [Samuel] Cox some fifteen miles from here. At that time I happened to be the only officer off duty, and at 12:00 o’clock at night started with thirty men, two detectives, and this same negro guide for the house of Captain Cox.
We reached there just at daylight, saw Captain Cox (a notorious “secesch!”) but he denied all knowledge of the parties.
We obtained evidence, however, that Booth and Harrold remained at his house some four hours in private conversation with him. They then mounted their horse, Booth being lifted on the horse by the negro guide whom they dismissed, and again we lost all trace of them. Cox was arrested and he is now in the Old Capitol prison.
The great difficulty is the people here are all traitors, and we can get no information from them. A report reached us the day before yesterday that they had been seen not far from where I am now writing. They came to the edge of a woods and called for this colored woman (our informant) to bring them some food. She describes the men and said that one of them had crutches. We immediately surrounded and one hundred of our men searched it through and through, but found nothing. The country here is heavily wooded, making it next to impossible to find one who makes any effort to escape. I hope, however, we will find him if he is not across the Potomac.
As it turns out, he was. Booth crossed the river into Virginia on the night of April 22–23. He was eventually surrounded in a tobacco barn at Richard Garrett’s farm near Port Royal by the 16th New York Cavalry on the night of April 25–26. He was shot (against orders) by Sergeant Boston Corbett—no relation to Wiley’s mother Elizabeth (Corbett) Wylie—and died several hours later.
John M. Wiley and the 8th Illinois Cavalry were eventually sent to Benton Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was officially mustered out of the service on July 17, 1865. He was still owed $160 of his $300 bounty/bonus.
Wiley does not reappear on the public record again until the 1880 Census for Rockford, Iowa, where he is shown living on a farm with his parents. (Yes, he moved from Rockford, Illinois, to Rockford, Iowa.) He never married. He died in Rockford on February 25, 1888, at the age of 50 and was buried in the town’s Riverside Cemetery, later joined by his father and step-mother.
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