John Minchin Lloyd (1835-18 December 1892) was an American bricklayer and policeman who, in 1865, testified against Mary Surratt, resulting in her death sentence.
Biography[]
John Minchin Lloyd was born in southern Maryland in 1835, and he worked as a bricklayer in Washington DC before becoming one of the first police officers hired by the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia in 1855. He left the force in 1862 due to his Confederate sympathies, and he ran a tavern in Clinton, Maryland and rented Mary Surratt's old tavern starting in 1864. On 11 April 1865, Surratt allegedly told Lloyd to get pistols ready for John Wilkes Booth to be picked up, and George Atzerodt had him bury them in case Union troops discovered them. On 18 April 1865, Lloyd was arrested by federal troops and was interrogated by Captain George C. Cottingham; he was either denied liquor or bribed with it in order to make him talk. Lloyd's testimony against Surratt helped seal her fate, and she was hanged on 5 July. Lloyd returned to Washington in October and worked as a bricklayer and construction contractor until he died from injuries sustained during a scaffold collapse in 1892.