Grave of John Wilkes Booth

[David Lockmiller]

There is a story in the October 27, 2017 New York Times titled "What We're Reading" with a subsection by Andrea Kannapell who reports a story in Atlas Obscura about the grave site of John Wilkes Booth:

First he was buried in the Old Penitentiary, along with his co-conspirators who were hanged there. Booth’s remains were exhumed and reburied in a warehouse of the Penitentiary in 1867. Finally in 1869, his remains were exhumed a third time and released to his family.

The assassin’s body was transported to Baltimore, the city of his youth, and buried in the Booth family plot in Green Mount Cemetery. The family plot is easy to find due to Junius Brutus Booth’s towering obelisk. But the Booth family, John Wilkes’ brother Edwin in particular, believed that an elaborate headstone for John Wilkes might attract unwanted attention and vandalism. Visitors today believe the small, plain, unmarked headstone denotes John Wilkes Booth’s final resting spot. Though some believe the white stone in the Booth family plot is actually that of Asia Booth Clarke, John Wilkes’ older sister. In lieu of flowers or stones, people leave pennies behind on the headstone, as if to give Lincoln the final word.