Watch this on Rumble: https://rumble.com/v6z3ufe-the-bloodlines-of-rebellion-j.d.-vance-the-surratt-legacy-and-americas-new-.html
Monologue
A TikTok creator named AJackson714 caught my attention on some major work he did. His claim is JD Vance is related to Mary Elizabeth Surratt who was an American boarding house owner in Washington, D.C., that was convicted of taking part in the conspiracy which led to the assassination of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Sentenced to death, she was hanged and became the first woman executed by the U.S. federal government. Is AJ is right, then it looks like there will be a new rise of the South!
Check out his TikTok Video: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Safg6A
Tonight we trace a thread through American history—a thread woven with blood, conspiracy, and resurrection. In 1865, as Abraham Lincoln fell at Ford’s Theatre, a woman named Mary Surratt was hanged for her part in the plot. Her son John fled into exile, shielded for a time by the Vatican. Their name became infamous, a shadow burned into the pages of our past: the Surratt family, conspirators against the Union. For more than a century their descendants lived under that shadow, and their boarding house in Maryland still stands as a monument to treason and martyrdom.
Now, a claim emerges from the dust of genealogy: that J.D. Vance, the new voice of America’s New Right, shares their blood. He was born James Donald Bowman, took the name Vance from his mother, and rose from Appalachian poverty to the Senate floor. But if this bloodline is real, then in his veins flows the legacy of Mary Surratt—the woman who conspired with John Wilkes Booth to change the course of our nation with a bullet.
Whether or not the genealogy can be proven beyond dispute, the symbolism is undeniable. America stands today where Germany stood a century ago: broken trust, social chaos, youth lost to nihilism, elites fanning the flames of division. In Weimar, that chaos gave birth to tyranny. Here, we see the same soil being plowed, fertilized by memes, lies, and despair. If J.D. Vance is tied to Mary Surratt, the story itself becomes a prophecy—a whisper that the South shall rise again, not only in spirit but in blood.
Tonight, we will not only follow the genealogy but ask the greater question: is America being staged, like Weimar Germany, to embrace the rebirth of an old rebellion? Are we watching the Confederacy return, cloaked in Catholicism, populism, and the language of destiny? And more importantly—what does God’s Word say about nations that try to resurrect the sins of their fathers?
Part 1 – The Assassination Legacy
On the evening of April 14, 1865, America stood at a turning point. The Civil War was ending, and Abraham Lincoln had come to Ford’s Theatre to celebrate peace. But peace was not in the hearts of all men. John Wilkes Booth, fueled by rage and vengeance, slipped into the presidential box and fired the shot that would echo through eternity. Yet Booth did not act alone. Around him stood a circle of co-conspirators—men and women who believed the Confederacy could rise again through bloodshed.
At the center of that circle was Mary Surratt, the boardinghouse keeper in Washington, D.C. It was in her home that Booth and his allies gathered. It was under her roof that maps were drawn, escape routes planned, and oaths of loyalty whispered. When the trap was sprung, the government wasted no time in making an example. Mary Surratt became the first woman executed by the United States. Her son, John Surratt Jr., escaped the noose and fled into the arms of Rome. Disguised and hidden, he was sheltered by Catholic networks and eventually found refuge within the Vatican itself, beyond the reach of American law.
This was no small act of rebellion. The Surratt conspiracy carried with it layers of symbolism: a Southern Catholic family in Maryland, operating under the banner of a cause they refused to let die, striking at the very heart of the Union’s triumph. The boarding house in Clinton, Maryland, still stands today, a reminder that treason is not always buried with the dead.
In this first act, we see not only the crime itself but the structure of protection. We see how ideology, bloodline, and religious alliance created a web strong enough to strike a president and shield the guilty. It is here, in the ashes of Lincoln’s death, that we begin to see how bloodlines of rebellion can reemerge when a nation is most vulnerable.
Part 2 – Genealogical Obscurity
Bloodlines are powerful, but they are also dangerous. Families tied to infamy rarely wear their history on their sleeves. After the gallows fell silent in 1865, the Surratt name became a curse. Descendants scattered, married into other lines, and in many cases, records grew faint or were deliberately obscured. Historians know this pattern well. In Europe, dynasties of the Black Nobility altered surnames, forged alliances, and buried scandals so that future heirs could rise without the shadow of their fathers’ sins. America was no different.
When families carry the mark of treason, they often hide it in plain sight. Clerks record names with alternate spellings, marriages are entered under middle names, and generations pass with just enough distance to blur the connection. For the genealogist, these gaps are frustrating—but they are also revealing. Sometimes, it is the very absence of clear records, the trail that suddenly grows faint, that tells you where something important has been covered.
This is the challenge with the claim surrounding J.D. Vance. If indeed his bloodline ties back through the Bowman and Bryant families to the Surratt line of Prince George’s County, Maryland, then it would explain why name changes occurred and why genealogical trails feel fractured. Such concealment is not proof of guilt—but it is a sign that something once deemed dangerous to carry forward may be hidden just beneath the surface.
What we see in these broken genealogies is more than family shame. It is the strategy of those who know that blood is memory, and memory can be weaponized. If the South is ever to rise again, it does not only need flags and songs—it needs bloodlines, heirs, and a myth of continuity. Obscuring the trail is not just about shame. It is about preparing for the day when those names can be resurrected without fear, when the blood can once again be invoked as destiny.
Part 3 – J.D. Vance’s Name Game
J.D. Vance was not born a Vance at all. He entered the world as James Donald Bowman, the son of Donald Bowman and Beverly Vance. But that name, Bowman, did not last. Through the turbulence of his childhood, through a father who drifted away, and through the instability that would later shape his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, the name was shed like a skin. For a time, he used the name Hamel, another surname linked to his mother’s remarriage. Finally, he returned to the name Vance—his maternal grandfather’s surname—and it was under this banner that he rose to national prominence.
On the surface, this is the story of a young man distancing himself from a troubled father. But names are not only about family—they are about identity, heritage, and sometimes concealment. In genealogy, every name change is a signpost: sometimes innocent, sometimes strategic. By leaving behind the Bowman name, Vance stepped out from a paternal line that some now claim connects to the Surratt family—the conspirators who once sought to resurrect the Confederacy through assassination.
Why choose Vance? In his own telling, it was about loyalty to the grandparents who raised him. But in the deeper weave of history, it also severs him—at least on paper—from the legacy of his father’s bloodline. To the genealogist, this raises a haunting question: was the Bowman name set aside simply for personal reasons, or was there also something in that name—a hidden connection—that might have carried a weight too great for a rising politician to bear?
This is where myth and reality blur. Whether or not J.D. Vance knew of any deeper link, the act of renaming himself echoes an older tradition: troubled lineages hiding behind chosen identities until the day the old blood is useful again. In America, where the past always lingers, the names we shed can sometimes speak louder than the ones we keep.
Part 4 – The Seurat/Surratt Anchor
At the heart of this genealogical web stands a man: Jacques, or Joseph Seurat—a French immigrant who arrived in Maryland in the late seventeenth century. In the county of Prince George, he planted his family line, and from him sprang the many branches of the Surratt name. His children carried forward a legacy that, like the name itself, splintered into variations—Surratt, Sarratt, Surrat—each spelling a little different, each record a little blurred. But all point back to Jacques Seurat, the anchor.
From this root the family divided. One branch descended through Joseph Surratt, who would father the line leading to Mary and John Surratt—the infamous co-conspirators in Lincoln’s assassination. The other branch flowed through Samuel Surratt, whose descendants, some claim, carried the bloodline into the families of Bowman, Bryant, and eventually J.D. Vance. If true, then Jacques Seurat stands as the common ancestor linking the assassin’s circle of 1865 to the populist senator of our own time.
The story of Jacques Seurat is not just about one man—it is about how families spread, how bloodlines intertwine, and how a single immigrant can, over centuries, shape the destinies of thousands. In his day, he was simply a settler, part of Maryland’s unique tapestry where Catholicism found more room than in the Puritan colonies. But in his seed lay the possibility of both infamy and prominence—descendants who would one day bear the gallows’ shame, and others who might carry political banners in Washington once again.
This is where genealogy becomes more than ancestry. It becomes a mirror of history itself: one branch steeped in conspiracy, the other ascending into respectability. Yet both traceable to the same root, the same soil, the same man. And if the claim is correct, then J.D. Vance’s rise is not just his own story—it is the reawakening of a line once stained by rebellion, now dressed in the garments of legitimacy.
Part 5 – Symbolism of the South Rising Again
Every nation carries ghosts, and America’s most restless spirit is the Confederacy. For some, the Civil War ended in 1865. For others, it never ended at all—it simply went underground. Songs, flags, monuments, and whispered vows kept the dream alive that one day “the South shall rise again.” To most, this was rhetoric. To some, it was destiny.
If J.D. Vance is tied by blood to Mary and John Surratt, then the Confederacy’s unfinished cause is no longer just a ghost story. It becomes genealogy. Bloodlines have always mattered to those who trade in myth. To claim kinship with the martyrs of a cause is to cloak yourself in their unfinished work. Mary Surratt died on the gallows as a traitor to the Union, but to those who saw her as a victim of Yankee vengeance, she became a martyr. Her son’s flight to Rome gave the story a sacred air: a Southern rebel sheltered by the Holy See.
Now imagine that blood resurfacing in the halls of power, reborn not in gray uniforms but in dark suits, not with rifles but with legislation, not on the battlefield but in the chambers of Washington. The South does not need to rise with armies when it can rise with narratives. And blood is the strongest narrative of all.
The idea of a Confederate bloodline seated in high office would be irresistible to those who thrive on symbolism. It would be spun as prophecy fulfilled, as destiny rekindled. And even if J.D. Vance himself has no interest in that framing, the story would be used—by think tanks, by ideologues, by elites who know how to turn myth into power. In this way, genealogy becomes not just history but a weapon.
Part 6 – From Weimar to Washington
History rarely repeats word for word, but it rhymes in dangerous ways. After the First World War, Germany was a nation humiliated, shackled by reparations, and hollowed out by inflation. The Weimar Republic became a stage of chaos—where bread lines stretched long, where currency turned to dust, and where faith in institutions collapsed. Out of that chaos rose movements of despair: paramilitaries in the streets, cults of violence, and young men who found identity not in building but in destroying.
America now walks a similar path. Our nation is not rebuilt ruins but digital ruins. Trust in elections, in government, in media—all are corroded. Inflation eats away at the working class, debt chains the young, and the promise of the future feels broken. Online, a generation gorges itself on nihilism, laughing at cruelty, turning violence into memes, and finding fellowship not in truth but in irony. In Weimar it was beer halls; in America it is message boards and encrypted chats.
And just as Germany became the proving ground for a strongman, America is being prepared in the same way. Out of chaos comes the temptation of order—an order not built on justice, but on rage. The stage is set for bloodlines, myths, and conspiracies to be woven into the fabric of politics. In Weimar, an embittered soldier rose with visions of destiny. In Washington, could a politician carrying the whisper of Confederate blood rise on the promise that the nation can be reborn only through fire?
The danger is not just the man himself, but the narrative crafted around him. Weimar Germany shows us that when despair meets myth, and myth meets power, a republic can fall swiftly into the abyss. And tonight we must ask: is America already marching to that same tune?
Part 7 – The Role of Catholicism
When John Surratt fled the hangman’s noose after Lincoln’s assassination, he did not run blindly. He ran to the one place where he knew protection could be found—the Vatican. Disguised and aided by Catholic networks, he slipped across the Atlantic and entered the walls of Rome, where American law could not reach him. For a season, the blood of rebellion was sheltered under the shadow of the Holy See.
This detail is more than historical trivia. It reveals how religious institutions can serve as safe havens for political conspirators. Maryland itself was unique among the colonies: a place where Catholicism held equal ground while Puritan colonies scorned it. The Surratt family’s Catholic identity was not incidental; it was central to how they built networks of loyalty, refuge, and silence. And it is no coincidence that in the storm of treason, John Surratt found his sanctuary in Rome.
Fast forward to today. J.D. Vance has openly embraced Catholicism, converting from the evangelical faith of his youth. On its face, this is a personal decision of belief. Yet when layered over the genealogy of the Surratt family, it takes on symbolic weight. It suggests continuity—a spiritual thread tying him not only to his ancestors but to the same Rome that once hid a conspirator against the Union.
This is not to say that faith itself is treason, but rather that institutions have long been used as shields and swords in the wars of nations. The Vatican has always played its own game, preserving bloodlines, providing sanctuary, moving pieces on the board of history. If the Surratt blood truly flows in Vance, then the circle closes: Catholic protection in the nineteenth century, Catholic identity in the twenty-first. In the language of myth, this is not coincidence. It is continuity.
Part 8 – Genealogy as Destiny
Across the ages, rulers have understood that blood is more than biology—it is legitimacy. Monarchies claimed divine right through their lineages, Black Nobility preserved their status through arranged marriages, and American dynasties like the Kennedys and Bushes rose by invoking their family name as a kind of political inheritance. When power changes hands, genealogy is often the quiet backbone that steadies the throne.
In this light, the claim that J.D. Vance shares blood with Mary and John Surratt becomes more than an obscure genealogical curiosity. It becomes potential myth. For those who know how to wield such narratives, the story writes itself: the South’s unfinished rebellion, carried forward not by ideology alone but by lineage, reemerges in the present. Bloodlines become prophecy.
This is how elites play the long game. Whether through secret societies, aristocratic networks, or think tanks with hidden genealogical research, bloodlines are mapped and watched. They are brought forward when the timing is right. The resurrection of an old name can ignite movements, especially when despair has primed the masses for destiny stories.
And here is the warning: genealogy does not need to be proven beyond all doubt to function as destiny. It only needs to be believed. The suggestion that Vance carries Surratt blood is enough for mythmakers to spin him as the heir of rebellion, the vessel of continuity. In times of chaos, symbols matter more than facts, and a man’s name can become a banner for forces far older than himself.
In the end, genealogy is not only about who begat whom. It is about how history itself is claimed, packaged, and weaponized. In this case, the question is not only whether J.D. Vance is related to Mary Surratt—but how that possibility can be used to shape the story America tells about itself in the days ahead.
Part 9 – Exploitation by Think Tanks
Power does not leave anything to chance. If a genealogical connection exists between J.D. Vance and the Surratt family, you can be sure it is already known in the halls of America’s think tanks and political machinery. Groups like the Heritage Foundation and others in the orbit of conservative strategy are not just policy shops—they are myth-makers. They understand that politics runs on story, and nothing carries weight like a story rooted in blood.
Imagine the possibilities: Vance, the Appalachian son who rose from poverty, is cast not only as a self-made man but as the heir of a forgotten struggle, descended from those who dared to defy the Union itself. To some audiences, that would be spun as treason reborn. To others, it would be destiny fulfilled, the South finally rising not by arms but by policy. Even if Vance himself never invokes it, others can do it for him. That is how symbols work—they are carried forward by the crowd.
The Heritage Foundation has long operated as the engine of narrative for the New Right, shaping the intellectual scaffolding behind political figures. If they have in their hands a genealogical card like this, they would know when to play it. Quietly at first, through whispers in sympathetic circles. Then loudly, when chaos demands a savior figure who can be framed as chosen by history itself.
This is not speculation pulled from the air. It is how elites have always worked. Bloodlines are filed, mapped, and studied. When useful, they are revealed. When dangerous, they are buried. And the timing of revelation is everything. If America is being set up as the new Weimar, then figures like Vance are not accidents—they are chess pieces placed for the moment when the board is ready.
Part 10 – The Coming Narrative
The danger is not only in whether J.D. Vance truly descends from Mary and John Surratt. The danger is in what that story becomes once it enters the bloodstream of politics. We live in an age where facts matter less than narratives, where whispers spread faster than documents, and where myth can move a people to action more powerfully than law.
Picture the stage: America in chaos, institutions failing, youth steeped in digital nihilism. Into this storm comes a man cast as destiny—an Appalachian senator, Catholic by faith, carrying whispers of a bloodline that once conspired against the Union. For some, that would be an abomination, proof that treason lives. For others, it would be a banner to rally under: the South rising again, not in gray uniforms but in tailored suits, not with muskets but with legislation, not from the fields of Virginia but from the halls of Washington.
And this is precisely how elites prepare the ground. They do not need the claim to be proven beyond doubt. They only need it to be believed, or at least repeated, so that it gains the aura of inevitability. Just as Weimar Germany was primed to embrace the myth of destiny through humiliation and despair, so too America is being conditioned to embrace bloodlines and symbols that promise a rebirth. In that myth, genealogy becomes prophecy, and prophecy becomes policy.
If this story takes root, the narrative is clear: America is not moving forward, it is circling back. Back to rebellion, back to division, back to blood debts that were never fully settled. The stage is being set not for unity but for repetition, not for peace but for another cycle of history’s oldest lie—that power is destiny, and blood must rule.
Conclusion
So where does this leave us? We have followed the trail from Ford’s Theatre to the halls of Washington, from Mary Surratt’s gallows to the rising star of J.D. Vance, from the shadows of the Confederacy to the whispers of genealogy. Whether the bloodline can be proven beyond all doubt matters less than the way the story is being prepared. For in the end, myth is often more powerful than fact, and blood—real or imagined—becomes the ink with which elites write their scripts.
If America is being cast as the new Weimar, then we must remember what followed Weimar: a descent into tyranny, war, and the machinery of death. But God’s people are not called to be swept away by the tides of history. We are called to discern, to see through the illusions, and to cling to a Kingdom that does not rise or fall on genealogy, but on grace.
Mary Surratt’s blood cannot save. J.D. Vance’s blood cannot condemn. Only the blood of Christ speaks a better word—one that covers not treason, not rebellion, but redemption. The elites may seek to weaponize history, to bind us with myths of blood and destiny, but the truth is written in heaven, not in human archives. The Lamb’s Book of Life cannot be altered by think tanks or genealogies.
So tonight, as we step back from the echoes of rebellion, let us fix our eyes not on the rise of the South or the fall of the Union, not on the schemes of Rome or the shadows of Weimar, but on the One who said, “Behold, I make all things new.” America may be walking toward another cycle of division, but those who belong to Christ are already citizens of a Kingdom that cannot be shaken. And that is where our hope rests—not in bloodlines of men, but in the eternal blood of the Son of God.
Sources
Bibliography
- Blumenthal, Ralph. When Time Stopped: The Surratt Family and the Lincoln Assassination. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
- FamilySearch. “Joseph Jacques Surratt (1662–1715).” Ancestors.FamilySearch.org. Accessed September 2025. https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/G458-28Z/joseph-jacques-surratt-1662-1715
- “Genealogy of Colonial Settlers in Maryland and Virginia.” Colonial-Settlers-MD-VA.us. Accessed September 2025. https://colonial-settlers-md-va.us
- Snopes. “Was J.D. Vance Born James Donald Bowman?” Last modified July 23, 2024. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jd-vance-born-james-donald-bowman
- Vance, J.D. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. New York: Harper, 2016.
- Valencia-García, Louie Dean. Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt-Histories. London: Routledge, 2020.
- Williams, Frank B. Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy. New York: Vantage Press, 1957.
Endnotes
- Mary Surratt’s role in the Lincoln assassination and her execution are well-documented in both primary trial transcripts and works like Frank B. Williams, Mary Surratt: An American Tragedy.
- John Surratt’s flight and refuge in the Vatican are supported by Ralph Blumenthal’s When Time Stopped and contemporary trial records.
- The genealogical claim traces to Jacques/Joseph Seurat, a French immigrant to Prince George’s County, Maryland (see FamilySearch, Ancestors database). His descendants included both Samuel Surratt (linked by some genealogists to the Bowman/Bryant/Vance line) and Joseph Surratt (ancestor of Mary and John Surratt).
- J.D. Vance’s name history—born James Donald Bowman, later Hamel, and finally adopting his maternal grandfather’s surname Vance—is confirmed in Hillbilly Elegy and verified by Snopes.
- The symbolic interpretation of “The South Rising Again” draws from post-Civil War “Lost Cause” literature and the continuity of Confederate memory culture.
- Valencia-García’s Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History provides the framework for understanding how nihilism, memes, and digital chaos function today in the same way that humiliation and despair primed Weimar Germany for authoritarianism.
- The possibility of think tanks and organizations like the Heritage Foundation exploiting genealogical narratives comes from the documented practice of elites using lineage, heritage, and myth as political leverage throughout history.