Cliffton

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On this location Maj. R. G. Watson and his daughter Mary, both Confederate agents, lived and carried on a direct mail and slave route between the North and the South during the entire Civil War. Because of the unobstructed view from these cliffs, this was an ideal location. Maj. Watson would meet the boat while Mary would watch from an upstairs window and signal if it was unsafe by placing a black flag in the window.

Within a short distance from this point John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin crossed the Potomac in his historic flight.

The home of Major Roderick G. Watson is two miles north of this marker. At the start of the Civil War many persons crossed the Potomac River to Virginia in this area. From 1862 to the end of the war, Thomas A. Jones served as a Confederate agent forwarding mail from the South to the North and Canada. Mary, daughter of Major Watson, hung a signal in a dormer window of Cliffton when it was not safe for the mail boat to cross from Virginia.

www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=3827