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JWB in New Jersey
In 1982 historian and author Louis A. Lepis wrote an article that stated JWB spent time in Long Branch, NJ. It is known that his younger brother the doctor had a summer home there at which his sister also stayed. Has anyone ever heard this story before? The relevant text is as follows:
That summer, Lepis wrote, Booth on several occasions stayed at the United States Hotel on Ocean Avenue in Long Branch, which stood four stories high between Morris and Chelsea avenues.
“It was noticed that he generally kept to his rooms and seldom mixed with the other guests,” Lepis wrote for The Press. “To add to the mystery were New York visitors to his rooms, known to be Copperheads — the viperous label placed on Northerners in sympathy with the South during the Civil War.”
Lepis wrote the meetings Booth had with the Copperheads are a mystery. But the time line of other events in relation to the plot against Lincoln, which eventually evolved from one of abduction to assassination when it became evident the war was lost for the South, suggests Booth was not wasting any time frolicking in the surf or working on his tan.
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