"Booth" Was Not John Wilkes Real Last Name?

[L Verge]

I have one more segment of the Hall files to peruse in respect to finding ancestors of JWB past John Booth, the silversmith, but so far I am striking out. In several pieces of correspondence between Mr. Hall and his London researcher, he makes it clear that a full genealogy is not part of his assassination project - which is understandable.

There are a few "clues" about the story of antecedents being Jewish. One is clearly John Booth's (JWB's great-grandfather) occupation as silversmith. This was evidently a profession chosen by many European Jews.

Mr. Hall then makes a quote from Izola Forrester's book on her take of the ancestry (pgs. 135-136): "...my grandmother always told us that the family had come originally from Spain and that the name was either Bethe or Botha. Ricardo Botha, she said, was a lawyer in Madrid and a Spanish Jew, who wrote inflammatory pamphlets against the existing royalist government in the seventeenth century and was banished, his property being confiscated. He settled with his family in Lisbon, Portugal, and continued to issue denunciatory writings. His wife was a Spanish lady, who followed him into exile with their son, Roberto. This son made his way to London and pursued the calling of a silversmith, changing his name to Robert. His son, John, in turn, followed the craft of his father..." If Ricardo was banished from Spain in the 1600s, there is a possibility that his son Roberto/Robert fathered "our" John Booth (b. 1723) who married Elizabeth Wilkes - but possibilities do not make definite proof without primary source materials.

This is an example of "my mother told me" history without primary sources to back it up, so we can only guess that Robert was the great-great-grandfather of JWB and came from a line of Spanish Jews via Portugal. Mr. Hall's paid researcher/genealogist in London never found a record to prove that, and since Izola Forrester's book, This One Mad Act, has been heavily dissected and rejected by most people, we have to suspicion this part of her writing also.

On a personal note, I can certainly look at photos of Izola's mother and grandmother and see Spanish (or southern European) bloodlines...