In 1865 a group of conspirators set out to kill the president and vice president of the United States. The president, Abraham Lincoln, was killed by John Wilkes Booth, but one of Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators, George Atzerodt, failed to kill vice president Andrew Johnson. Atzerodt fled Washington to a property owned by his family in Germantown and, on his way, spent one night at Clopper Mill—unwittingly thrusting this structure into the pages of national history. The beginnings of Clopper Mill date back to the 1770s when this grist mill was…
