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Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth

Page 46

by Alford, Terry


  6

  John T. Ford comment in Mahoney to Milius, Tudor Hall, July 9 and 17 [1938], author’s collection.

  7

  Forney’s War Press (Philadelphia), April 25, 1865.

  8

  Boston Journal clipping, n.d., laid into copy of The Elder and the Younger Booth, Brown Collection, Manuscripts Department, Boston Public Library; clipping, n.d., Albert Davis Collection, HRHRC.

  9

  Stephen M. Archer, Junius Brutus Booth: Theatrical Prometheus (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), an indispensable book for information on Booth’s parents; Asia Booth Clarke, Booth Memorials: Passages, Incidents, and Anecdotes in the Life of Junius Brutus Booth (the Elder) (New York: Carleton, 1866), pp. 77–79.

  10

  Liber HD, No. 7, Folio 407–10 (June 4, 1824), and Liber HDG, No. 8, Folio 261 (March 15, 1825), Office of the Clerk of Court, Harford County Courthouse, Bel Air, Md. Junius could own real property only if he declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States and then became one within twelve months. Bernard C. Steiner, Citizenship and Suffrage in Maryland (Baltimore: Cushing, 1895), p. 20.

  11

  Elizabeth Rogers to W. Stump Forward, Baltimore, Md., Aug. 16, 1886, Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Manuscript Division, LOC.

  12

  St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 8, 1880; James T. Wollon Jr., “Harford County Architectural Notes: Tudor Hall, Fountain Green: Home of the Booth Family,” Harford Historical Bulletin, no. 3 (Spring 1973), p. 11; Walter E. McCann, “The Booth Family in Maryland,” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, vol. 17 (April 1884), p. 407.

  13

  Dinah Faber, “Interior Decorations at Tudor Hall While the Booth Family Was in Residence ca. Spring 1853–Spring/Summer 1857,” typescript, n.d., courtesy of the author; Asia Booth Clarke, The Elder and the Younger Booth (New York: James R. Osgood, 1882), pp. 66–67; New York Tribune, May 12, 1865.

  14

  Asia Booth Clarke, Personal Recollections of the Elder Booth (London: printed but not published, n.d. [1880?]), pp. 24–25.

  15

  Mahoney and Milius, “House,” p. Ad-5, and untitled notes in Mahoney Papers, HCHS; Ella V. Mahoney, Sketches of Tudor Hall and the Booth Family (Bel Air, Md.: author, 1931), pp. 11–13; Bel Air Aegis, May 26, 1899; Mahoney, untitled manuscript on Booth’s burial, p. 17, Mahoney Papers, HCHS.

  16

  Clarke, Booth, p. 64.

  17

  New York Mercury, Sept. 17, 1887.

  18

  John T. Ford, draft of letter to Baltimore Gazette [1867?], Ford Papers, MdHS.

  19

  Birth years for Henry, Mary Ann, Frederick, and Elizabeth are given, with limited confidence, from Kimmel, Mad Booths of Maryland, p. 340. There appears to have been an eleventh child named Mary who died at birth in Boston in 1828. Arthur W. Bloom, Edwin Booth: A Biography and Performance History (Jefferson, N.C., and London: McFarland, 2013), p. 6. The family Bible, located at the Museum of the City of New York, gives no birth years.

  20

  Mahoney and Milius, “House,” p. 76; Mahoney, “Disposal of Body,” manuscript (1930s), HSHC.

  21

  Clarke, Booth, p. 113; Francis Wilson, John Wilkes Booth: Fact and Fiction of Lincoln’s Assassination (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1929), p. 7.

  22

  William Winter, Vagrant Memories: Being Further Recollections of Other Days (New York: George H. Doran, 1915), p. 169.

  23

  Frank A. Burr, “The Life of a Great Actor,” clipping [ca. 1890], Booth Family Files, HTC.

  24

  Mahoney and Milius, “House,” pt. 1, pp. 100, Ad-4.

  25

  Anne Hartley Gilbert, The Stage Reminiscences of Mrs. Gilbert, pp. 57–61.

  26

  Mahoney and Milius, “House,” pp. 102–4, and untitled notes in Mahoney Papers, HSHC.

  27

  Mahoney and Milius, “House,” pt. 1, p. 66; New York Christian Advocate and Journal, April 8, 1852; Methodist ministers on Harford Circuit courtesy of John H. Pearce Jr.

  28

  Baltimore Sun, June 1, 1887; Baltimore American, July 12, 1896; Mahoney, Sketches, p. 35; Bel Air Aegis, May 26, 1899; Mahoney and Milius, “House,” p. 100; W. Stump Forward, “Junius Brutus Booth,” manuscript (1887), p. 98, MdHS.

  29

  Kimmel, notebook, p. 44; Mahoney and Milius, “House,” p. Ad-6; note in hand of Milius, Mahoney Papers, HCHS; Forward, “Junius Brutus Booth,” p. 121.

  30

  Dinah Faber, “Joseph and Ann Hall: Behind the Scenes at Tudor Hall,” Harford Historical Bulletin, no. 104 (Fall 2006), passim; Mahoney and Milius, “House,” pp. 25, 50; Clarke, Personal Recollections, p. 40.

  31

  Clarke, Personal Recollections, p. 17. Archer’s fine biography provides an extended list of his ups and downs.

  32

  Edwin Booth to William Winter, Boston, July 17, 1886, in Between Actor and Critic: Selected Letters of Edwin Booth and William Winter, ed. Daniel Watermeier (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 274–77.

  33

  “Booth Letter,” History Detectives, July 6, 2009 (season 7, episode 3), www.pbs.org/historydetectives, accessed Nov. 5, 2013. Thanks to the enlightening research of Prof. Dan Feller.

  34

  Archer, Booth, pp. 150–51.

  35

  Baltimore Sun, May 3, 1838.

  36

  [Thomas Hall], The Actor; or, A Peep behind the Curtain (New York: William H. Graham, 1846), p. 141.

  37

  [Hall], The Actor, pp. 93–43.

  38

  Mahoney, Sketches, pp. 24–25: Mahoney and Milius, “House,” pt. 1, p. 24.

  39

  Clarke, Booth Memorials, p. 94.

  40

  Baltimore American, July 12, 1896.

  41

  Clarke, Personal Recollections, p. 28.

  42

  Boston Daily Globe, March 7, 1909.

  43

  Mahoney and Milius, “House,” pp. 58–60; Bel Air Aegis, March 7, 1902.

  44

  St. John (New Brunswick) Daily Telegraph, March 30, 1874, courtesy of Daniel F. Johnson; Baltimore Sun, Sept. 7, 1850. The Register of Degrees at King’s College, Windsor, Nova Scotia, lists four degrees conferred on Arnold between 1825 and 1836, the final being a D.C.L. Edwin Arnold, Arithmetical Questions on a New Plan (New York: Cady and Burgess, 1850), p. iii.

  45

  “Academies,” clipping, Joseph F. Hughes Scrapbook Collection (1945–49), HSHC.

  46

  Clarke, Booth, p. 35.

  47

  Booth to Joseph H. Simonds, Philadelphia, October 9, 1861, in “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me”: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth, ed. John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), p. 72. A few additional letters have been discovered since this book was published.

  48

  James Shettel, typescript, n.d., James Shettel Papers, York County Historical Society; George Alfred Townsend, The Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth (New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, 1865), p. 20.

  49

  Clarke, Unlocked Book, p. 168.

  50

  Clarke, Booth, p. 57.

  51

  Cincinnati Enquirer, Aug. 3, 1884.

  52

  Philadelphia Tribune, June 27, 1929.

  53

  Ernest C. Miller, John Wilkes Booth in the Pennsylvania Oil Region (Meadville, Pa.: Crawford County Historical Society, 1987), p. 63.

  54

  Dallas Morning News, Feb. 23, 1908.

  55

  Washington Evening Star, Aug. 18, 1906.

  56

  Mahoney and Milius, “House,” pt. 1, pp. 16–17; Baltimore Sun, March 6, 1938; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 8, 1880.

  57

  Clarke, Booth Memorials, p. 79; Forward, “Junius Brutus Booth,” pp. 147�
��54.

  58

  After renting various places, Junius took a ninety-nine-year lease on the house on Exeter (formerly Green) Street on September 26, 1845. Deed Books AWB-357-265 and AWB 381-452. Formerly kept at the Register of Deeds Office in Baltimore, these volumes are now online at MDLandRec.net.

  59

  McCann, “Booth Family in Maryland,” p. 408; Baltimore Sun, Dec. 12, 1898.

  60

  Faber, “Interior Decorations”; Clarke, Personal Recollections, p. 16.

  61

  Clarke, Booth, p. 6; Baltimore Sun, June 18–19, 1888; Daily Alta California (San Francisco), July 15, 1888; Bloom, Edwin Booth, p. 7.

  62

  James J. Williamson, Prison Life in the Old Capitol and Reminiscences of the Civil War (West Orange, N.J.: n.p., 1911), p. 79.

  63

  Clarke, Booth, pp. 35, 45. Booth may have attended school for a brief period in York, Pennsylvania, as well.

  64

  McCann, “Booth Family in Maryland,” pp. 409–10; Henry Tyrrell, “Edwin Booth,” clipping, n.d. (ca. 1886), Booth Files, HTC; “Mr. Edwin Booth’s Birthday,” clipping, n.d. (ca. 1885), Dielman File (Oversize), Booth Files, MdHS.

  65

  Clipping, n.p. [Jan. 2, 1897], Hamilton File, HTC; Nashville American, Dec. 25, 1898.

  66

  Baltimore Sun, Feb. 26, 1925.

  67

  Allentown (Pa.) Sunday Call-Chronicle, Feb. 12, 1956.

  68

  Baltimore American, July 27, 1903; Celia Logan, “These Our Actors,” clipping, n.d., Booth Files, HTC.

  69

  Stuart Robson, “Memories of Fifty Years: Chapter 1,” Everybody’s Magazine, vol. 3 (July 1900), p. 87.

  70

  Townsend, Life, Crime, and Capture, p. 21.

  71

  John Locke, “Of Cruelty,” in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), at www.animalrightshistory.com, accessed Oct 10, 2013.

  72

  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. (Washington and London: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013), pp. 469–75.

  73

  John J. McLaurin, Sketches in Crude-Oil (Franklin, Pa.: author, 1902), p. 105; Cornell Greening and Richard Match, “New Evidence,” Blue Book, vol. 86 (Feb. 1948), p. 20; Clarke, Booth, p. 55.

  74

  “The Booth Family Mystery,” clipping, n.d., n.p., Booth Family Files, MdHS.

  75

  “A Sad Romance Recalled,” n.d. [Baltimore, 1891], n.p., Booth Family Files, MdHS; Boston Daily Globe, March 7, 1909.

  76

  New York Press, Aug. 9, 1891.

  77

  Mahoney and Milius, “House,” pp. Ad-3, 13, 18, 94; Kimmel, notebook, pp. 13–14.

  78

  Clarke, Personal Recollections, pp. 24–25.

  79

  J. B. Booth, Adelaide Booth, and Richard J. Booth, Agreement, Baltimore, May 7, 1847, J. B. Booth Papers, MdHS.

  80

  Chicago Evening Journal, April 19, 1865; Cincinnati Daily Commercial, April 18, 1865.

  81

  Cleveland Leader, May 6, 1884.

  82

  “Tombs of the Booths,” clipping, n.d., July 26, 1891, JOH.

  83

  Mahoney and Milius, “House,” pp. Ad-13, 14; Mahoney, “Chronology of John Wilkes Booth’s Life,” undated manuscript, Mahoney Papers, HCHS.

  84

  Mahoney, “Why Booth Shot Lincoln,” typescript (1940), Mahoney Papers, HCHS.

  85

  Bloom, Edwin Booth, p. 6.

  86

  Cincinnati Daily Commercial, April 18, 1865.

  87

  Clarke, Booth, p. 45; Mahoney, Sketches, p. 14; Washington Evening Star, March 21, 1891.

  88

  John E. and Eli M. Lamb, Circular of Milton Boarding School … (Baltimore: James Lucas & Son., 1859), pp. 7, 11; Friends’ Intelligencer and Journal, vol. 42 (July 18, 1885), p. 361; Francis Lamb, “The Lambs,” typescript, n.d., p. 9, and Elizabeth Lamb to James [no last name], n.p., Sept. 12, 1959, both in Folder 14, Box 2, Lamb-Booth-Miller Family Papers, Friends’ Historical Library, Swarthmore College. My thanks to Father Robert L. Keesler for his early work on Booth’s education.

  89

  David Allen, “The Milton Inn Connects Shakespeare, Lincoln,” North County News (Baltimore), Feb. 13, 1997, p. 17; Milton Inn/Lamb’s School, Maryland Historical Trust Inventory of Historical Properties, Inventory Form.

  90

  James W. Shettel, “J. Wilkes Booth at School,” New York Dramatic Mirror, vol. 75 (Feb. 26, 1916), p. 3; “More Reminiscences of Wilkes Booth,” Washington Evening Star, May 2, 1885.

  91

  Esther L. Cox and George E. Cox to David R. Barbee, Baltimore, Aug. 31, 1940, Folders 203 and 204, Box 4, David Rankin Barbee Papers, Special Collections, Lauinger Library, Georgetown University.

  92

  Clarke, Booth, pp. 39–43.

  93

  Mahoney and Milius, “House,” pp. 33–34; Clarke, Booth, p. 43–44, 66. Gypsies also frequented the neighborhood of Woolsey’s blacksmith’s shop near the farm.

  94

  Clarke, Booth, p. 38.

  95

  Friends’ Intelligencer, vol. 80 (Dec. 22, 1923), p. 861; T. Chalkley Matlack, “Brief Historical Sketches Concerning Friends’ Meetings,” typescript (1938), vol. 4, p. 994, Friends’ Historical Library, Swarthmore.

  96

  Entry for Sept. 9, 1850, Marriages Volume (1775–1950), Gunpowder Monthly Meeting, Baltimore Yearly Meeting, pp. 183–84, Friends’ Historical Library, Swarthmore.

  97

  Towson (Md.) Jeffersonian, Dec. 26, 1931; Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 8, 1934; Thomas P. Slaughter, Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 3–7.

  98

  Rhodehamel and Taper, “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me,” p. 107.

  99

  Mahoney and Milius, “House,” pt. 1, p. 46.

  100

  “Edwin Booth’s Real Self,” Theatre, vol. 24 (Dec. 1916), p. 360.

  101

  Booth versus Booth, Libel, Boston, May 12, 1851, Record Book for the Supreme Judicial Court, Suffolk County, Nov. 1851 Term, Case Docket 513, p. 318. Her mother stated in this document that Blanche was ten years of age. New York World, Jan. 11, 1925.

  102

  Winter, Vagrant Memories, p. 169; “Drawing to an End,” clipping, ca. 1889, Edwin Booth File, HRHRC; “Booth’s First Play,” clipping, n.d., Booth Files, HTC; Baltimore American, July 27, 1903.

  103

  Kimmel, notebook, p. 33; Mahoney and Milius, “House,” p. Ad-11; Townsend, Life, Crime, and Capture, p. 20.

  104

  New York Herald, Nov. 1, 1903.

  105

  St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 12, 1881; Wilson, Booth, p. 7; Clarke, Booth, pp. 33–34, 56; draft of “This One Mad Act,” p. 131, Izola F. Page Collection, examined at Keene, N.H., courtesy of my friends Marjorie Page Colony and Izola Page Allen; Townsend, Life, Crime, and Capture, pp. 20–21.

  106

  New York Mercury, Oct. 5, 1884.

  107

  Inventory and nomination forms for Tudor Hall, National Register of Historical Places (1972–82), HSHC; Archer, Junius Brutus Booth, p. 198; Wollon, “Tudor Hall, Fountain Green,” p. 11.

  108

  Clarke, Booth, p. 9.

  109

  Baltimore Sun, Nov. 4, 1852, and Nov. 2, 1889; Isobel Davidson, Real Stories from Baltimore County History (1917; rpt. Hatboro, Pa.: Tradition Press, 1967), p. 172; Amy A. Stirling (Van Bokkelen’s great-granddaughter) to Mrs. Cain, Baltimore, Feb. 12, 1928, JOH.

  110

  Booth to Joseph Simonds, Washington, D.C., April 19, 1863, in Rhodehamel and Taper, “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me,” p. 88.

  111

  A Circular Describing the Mode of Discipline and the Course of Studies in the Junior and Senior Departments of St. Timothy’s H
all (Baltimore: Joseph Robinson, 1852); Rules and Regulations for the Government of the Students at St. Timothy’s Hall (Baltimore: Joseph Robinson, 1852), pp. 11–14; Erick F. Davis, “Saint Timothy’s Hall,” [Baltimore County Historical Society] History Trails, vol. 11 (Spring 1977), pp. 11–15. The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland Archives in Baltimore holds correspondence, class lists, pamphlets, sermons, and other material on the school in this period.

  112

  Baltimore Sun, March 29, 1925.

  113

  Clarke, Booth, p. 35.

  114

  New York Clipper, April 29, 1865; Atlanta Journal, Jan. 20, 1924.

  115

  Chicago Post, April 16, 1865; “Wilkes Booth,” clipping, n.d. [1865], LFFRC.

  116

  Michael W. Kauffman, ed. [Samuel B. Arnold], Memoirs of a Lincoln Conspirator (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1995), p. 42.

 

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