#Mud July 11
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I think many of us have heard of the expression “Your name is MUD”
Two years ago I got to travel to the Dry Tortugas National Park which is located 70 miles away from Key West FL. I spent a week in Key West as part of group of 10 people. It was the best vacation of my life. We got to the park via a ferry. That trip involved a little history on the phrase “Your name is MUD”.
Made up of seven small islands, it is one of the world’s most unique eco-attractions. Its crown jewel, the historic Fort Jefferson shown below, was once used as a prison during the Civil War.
Fort Jefferson’s most famous prisoner, Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd left his historical mark on the Dry Tortugas.
Samuel Alexander Mudd was born on December 20th, 1833 in Maryland, just 30 miles from Washington, DC. Dr. Mudd began practicing medicine in 1856 after graduating from Baltimore Medical College, currently known as the University of Maryland. After beginning his life as a practicing physician and farmer, Dr. Mudd married Sarah Francis Dyer, and fathered nine children.
Dr. Mudd is most infamously known for his involvement in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, who was shot by John Wilkes Booth in 1865. Mudd splinted the broken leg of Booth. He received a life sentence and arrived at Fort Jefferson on July 24, 1865.
President Andrew Johnson pardoned Mudd shortly before he left office in March, 1869. Mudd returned to Maryland. Mudd died of pneumonia in in 1883 at the age of 49.
Samuel Mudd is sometimes given as the origin of the phrase “your name is MUD”, as in, for example, the 2007 film National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
However, according to an online etymology dictionary, this phrase has its earliest known recorded instance in 1823, ten years before Mudd’s birth, and is based on an obsolete sense of the word “MUD” meaning “a stupid twaddling fellow”.
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