Izola Martha Mills marriage certificate/note to Mr. Hall

[RJNorton]

Many thanks to Steve Williams for sending the following materials. Steve writes, "The first is an article from page 4 of the 05 Dec. 1885 edition of the New York Sun. It's a letter sent anonymously from Martha Izola Mills in which she claims John Wilkes Booth was her husband and father of two of her kids, Ogarita and Charles Alonzo (without giving their names. Edwin Booth saw this article and was livid, writing to Edwina:

“Today’s Tribune contains a wretched lie about John Wilkes’ family, not one word of truth in it from end to end; I suspect it is the beginning of a ‘black-mail scheme’ of which I had some intimation months ago through a Boston lawyer… The widow of this Tribune article is only one of twenty that wrote to me after John’s death & is the one, I suspect, who got all poor Rose’s money – some $10,000 from her. Rose says all that is ended now & that she will save her money – I hope she is not deceiving me.”

Edwin was wrong the newspaper was the Sun, not the Tribune. I got the quote above from an article on Dave Taylor's site about Rosalie Booth which one can read here:

https://lincolnconspirators.com/2013/11/...ann-booth/

Martha had been in contact with Rosalie since around 1869 when Martha and her family had been living in Baltimore.

The second is this letter I found looking over some of the Izola Forrester papers several years ago. It's from Martha to son Charles Alonzo dated in 1883, but apparently meant to be given to Charles after her death (which was in 1887). In it she tells Charles that her first husband Charles Stills Bellows was his father. It's written two years before the letter sent to the Sun and its kind of weird how she tells Charles that her husband was his father but asks him to try and stay in contact with Rosalie Booth.