From the Monday after he shot Abraham Lincoln until the following week, John Wilkes Booth was harbored in the wilds of Maryland and then helped across the Potomac River to Virginia by Tom Jones.

At the time of the Lincoln assassination, Thomas A. Jones was 45 years old and had spent the years of the American Civil War working “with zeal” in the Confederate cause in Southern Maryland. He primarily acted as an aid to Confederate spies moving through Charles County and helping the substantial intelligence network by moving mail.