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Booth's Grandchild To Wed
06-19-2019, 04:28 AM
Post: #16
RE: Booth's Grandchild To Wed
(06-03-2016 10:10 PM)Carolyn Mitchell Wrote:  
(06-03-2016 11:07 AM)wpbinzel Wrote:  
(06-02-2016 11:33 PM)Carolyn Mitchell Wrote:  
(06-02-2016 05:08 PM)wpbinzel Wrote:  
(11-03-2015 12:59 AM)Carolyn Mitchell Wrote:  I actually created the find a grave page for Mildred Booth along one for his brother Edwin Grossman, her mother Edwina and her husband Ignatius. I was fortunate to be able to visit Mildred's grave in Pasadena during the summer.

I will be taking a road trip to Cypress Lawn Cemetery located in Colma, Ca, south of south of San Francisco and look for Harriet Mace Booth, second wife of Junius Booth Jr.

Mildred Booth Grossman

Carolyn - Thank you for creating Find-A-Grave postings for Edwin Booth's descendants! My understanding is that the last of the direct descendants were the children of Mildred Booth Grossman (Waterbury) Tilton (a granddaughter of Edwin): Edwin Booth Waterbury and Edwina Booth Waterbury Cutting. My understanding is E. B. Waterbury died in 1974, and Edwina B. W. Cutting died in 1985, and that neither had children (at least, none that survived to adulthood), thus, 1985 was the end of Edwin Booth's bloodline. Are you (or anyone else) aware of any other direct (and possibly living) descendants of Edwin Booth? Thanks!


Mildred' brother, Edwin Booth Grossman. He married Helen Foos in 1908. They had one daughter named Lois Fellows Grossman. Lois married Henry White. Lois and Henry had one daughter named Lois Fellows White (still living). Lois married Herbert Rathbun III and they have a daughter named Kristin Booth Rathbun (born 1970).


Here's a photo of Lois Fellows White from The Players' Facebook page, taken in 2011.
https://www.facebook.com/ThePlayersNYC/p...=3&theater

"Rathbun." Now there is some near-historic irony. Thanks for the information! (And WELCOME as a new member of the Surratt Society!!!)

Haha! I didn't notice that until you just pointed it out about Rathbun.

Actually, Herbert Warren Rathbun III 1949-1992 would be a distant cousin of Maj Henry Reed Rathbone. Rathbone and Rathbun descendants of John Rathbone 1628/1629-1702 include sons John Jr Rathbone, whose line goes to Henry Reed Rathbone and Samuel Rathbone, whose line goes to Herbert Warren Rathbun III, husband of Lois Fellows White. After his death Lois remarried and is now Lois Trebisacci. There also appear to be a few more descendants of Edwin Booth.

John Rathbone
Born: 8 Mar 1628/29, Hough Green, Ditton, Lancashire, England 7
Christened: 8 Mar 1628/29, Farnworth Chapel, Ditton, Prescott, Lancashire, England 2 11 12 13
Marriage (1): Margaret Acres about 1654 in Prescott, , Lancashire, England 1
Died: 6 Oct 1702, New Shoreham, Block Island at age 73 8
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looking for my cousin
lois trebisacci (View posts)
Posted: 30 Apr 2000 02:19AM
I am trying to find my cousin, Stephen Waterbury.
He should be around 50 years old. His mother's
name was Mildred Grossman. She married a men
named Tilton and Waterbury. I believed they/she
lived in California. Mildred had a brother,Clarence,
who later changed his name to Edwin. He was called Ted.
********************************************
Re: looking for my cousin
SuzieNash34
(View posts)
Posted: 17 Jan 2010 02:01PM
Classification: Query
Surnames: Waterbury, Grossman
Lois, I have the information about your cousin Edwin Booth Waterbury for you. He died in July 1974 in Los Angeles County, CA. I have not been able to find out exactly where or from what. He was married to Susan Reynolds and she was from Ohio originally; she was born in 1912 and died in 1987. They had one son, Stephen Arthur Booth Waterbury, born 2 Sep 1943 in California and he died 24 March 2004 at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles from lung cancer. He owned a bar somewhere in Los Angeles but I don't have any information about that as of yet. Stephen was married five times: (1) Sharon Tyree (Valerie, 1961; Jeffrey, 1962; and Cherie, 1963); (2) Sharon Keskey; (3) Sandra Sinclair (Julie, 1974); (4) Patricia Meadors (Kyle, 1988; Garrett, 1996); and (5) Shannon Evans. His daughter Julie provided the information for his death certificate; he was cremated and from the information given, it appears that she has his cremains at her residence. I believe that all of the children live in the Orange County, California area but I have not confirmed this, nor have I tried to contact these people.

You were correct about Mildred Grossman marrying a Waterbury and a Tilton. She was married to another man before Cleveland Livingston Waterbury but without my notes in front of me, I couldn't tell you his name. Cleve Waterbury was from the NY Waterburys; his father was one of the founders of the Yacht Club and several of his brothers were internationally known polo players; one of his brothers was married to Eleanor Roosevelt's aunt. Cleve was married once before Mildred and once after they divorced. Mildred's 3rd husband was Arthur Tilton. She lived in the Pasadena, CA area and she and Arthur are buried in a cemetery in Altadena, CA. Mildred died from cancer.

You probably knew that Mildred and Cleve Waterbury had a daughter Edwina and she died in 1984. She lived in Woodland Hills, CA. She was married to Richard Hoffman Cutting and he died in 1972. ***** was an actor, nothing really major. I don't know if you remember the John Wayne movie "The Horse Soldiers" but ***** Cutting portrayed Gen. Wm. T. Sherman in that movie; it was a very small role but he was believeable. Both ***** and Edwina donated their bodies to the University of Southern California School of Dentistry and after speaking with the woman who heads the Willed Body Program at USC School of Medicine, we know that they were cremated and believe their ashes were scattered. Apparently when there were no family members to claim the cremains it was customary to either scatter them (I still believe they might have requested this is their wills) or bury the unclaimed cremains in a mass grave. It would be sad if this is what happened to ***** and Edwina.

Mildred left some papers and photographs to Cal State Northridge (CSUN) and I know that these are housed in the library there. I had planned to go down there (about a three hour drive from my home) and take a look at these, but it seems I just haven't been able to find the time with all the other things going on right now. The person to contact about these is Tony Gardner.

As I said, I've been corresponding with Mike Kauffman and Dinah Faber and have put together a very extensive genealogical project of the Booth family which is on Ancestry.com. If you email me at luv_u_suzieq@yahoo.com I would be very glad to give you access to this project. I have a very nice photo of Mildred as a young girl that you might want to see.

I hope I have been able to answer your question about your cousin. I hope to hear from you.

Best regards,
Suzie Nash
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Re: looking for my cousin
cherie waterbury
(View posts)
Posted: 01 Jul 2018 09:23AM
Classification: Query
I am Cherie Waterbury. Daughter of Stephen Arthur Booth Waterbury. I found out about my cousins; Kyle,Garrett and Lois through The Players Club.
Leeleeheart@gmail
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I called Lois a couple of weeks ago to find out whether she had done autosomal dna testing, but she wouldn't answer me, and referred me to Nate Orlowek as the Booth guru. Among my notes I also found Lois has done some sort of Dna testing, but I declined to call Mr Orlowek, a disciple of the David E. George hoax. Mind you I'm willing to entertain, briefly, thoughts that the wrong man, who coincidentally had Booth's diary, got away, but please, David E. George?

Kin of Lincoln's assassin agree to brother's body ID tests

By Edward Colimore


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | (MCT) In life, Edwin and John Wilkes Booth were brothers, ambitious actors and bitter rivals. They ruthlessly competed for the limelight on stages in Philadelphia and across the nation.

Edwin became one of America's greatest Shakespearean actors, while John Wilkes achieved infamy in another role — as the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, at Ford's Theater in Washington.

Now, for the first time, Booth descendants have agreed to exhume Edwin's body, adding drama to the family's story and delighting historians who have speculated that John Wilkes escaped capture 145 years ago.

By using DNA comparisons, relatives from the Philadelphia area, New Jersey and Rhode Island hope to learn in the coming months whether the lore of John Wilkes Booth's flight is true.

Is Lincoln's assassin in an unmarked grave at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, as history records? Or did he elude justice, as descendants have been told for generations, to live 38 more years?

"I'm absolutely in favor of exhuming Edwin," said Joanne Hulme, 60, a resident of Philadelphia's Kensington section who is the historian in the Booth family. "Let's have the truth and put this thing to rest."

"It's better to know," said her sister Suzanne Flaherty, 64, of Bordentown.

The sisters, with a third sibling, Virginia Kline of Warminster, have wondered about Booth stories that don't match accepted history, as did their late mother.

"John Wilkes Booth is probably loving this," added Lois Trebisacci, 60, of Westerly, R.I., whose grandfather was Edwin Booth's grandson. "Just being an actor, I'm sure he loves the controversy."

At 9 p.m. April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth, son of theatrical parents, walked into Taltavull's Star Saloon next to Ford's Theatre and asked for a bottle of whiskey and some water.

"You'll never be the actor your father was," a customer reportedly told him.

"When I leave the stage, I will be the most famous man in America," Booth fired back, according to accounts.

An hour and a half later, the dark-haired actor — a matinee idol of his time — shot Lincoln in the State Box at Ford's and dropped about 11 feet to the stage, breaking his left leg.

History says Booth was cornered 12 days later by detectives and Union soldiers in a tobacco barn at the Garrett farm in Port Royal, Va. Shortly after 2 a.m. on a cool and cloudy Wednesday, he was mortally wounded in the neck.

Or was he?

Efforts by descendants to open the Baltimore grave believed to be John Wilkes Booth's were thwarted in 1995 by a judge who concluded its location could not be conclusively determined. The remains were supposed to be in the family plot, but reports placed it at an undisclosed location.

The family had hoped to use the skull and photographic techniques, along with other identifying scars, to make an identification.

Their best option now is to compare DNA from Edwin Booth, buried in Cambridge, Mass., with a specimen from the man shot at the barn, who experts agree is buried in Baltimore. Three cervical vertebrae from that body are in the collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington.

Philadelphia's Mutter Museum has cervical tissue from the man, but the DNA was degraded by formaldehyde and alcohol.

The Booth escape "is a story that never seems to die," said Jan Herman, chief historian for the Navy Medical Department and special assistant to the Navy surgeon general in Washington.

"I have always been disturbed by the opposition from recognized Civil War historians" to uncover the truth, he said. "We have the means, and it's certainly worth solving an age-old mystery. Why wouldn't you want to do that?"

Probably no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than Nate Orlowek, a Maryland educator and historian who since age 15 has doggedly pursued Booth through the yellowing pages of books and period documents.

"If the man who killed our greatest president got away and a giant hoax was perpetrated on the American people, then we should know about it," he said.

Orlowek, 53, has trailed Booth through the reports of witnesses who claimed another man was shot at the farm: James William Boyd or John William Boyd, who bore a striking resemblance to the assassin and by some accounts was sought for the murder of a Union captain.

He's followed the trail of carnivals that exhibited the mummified body of a man the barkers claimed was John Wilkes Booth. And he's sought clues from descendants and interviewed forensic pathologists, authors and lawyers.

His conclusion? Booth escaped 145 years ago to live in Granbury, Texas, as John St. Helen, then changed his name to David E. George and moved to what is now Enid, Okla. He worked there as an itinerant painter before poisoning himself.

George's mummified remains were allegedly last seen at a carnival in New Hope in 1976.

"Society exists based on the knowledge of itself and the truth of its history," Orlowek said. "We believe in getting the truth no matter what it is. ...

"If we are proven right," he said, "history will be set on its ear. This will teach us that just because something was blindly accepted in the past, that it is not necessarily true."

The Booth conundrum comes down to the DNA, say family members.

Once a sample is retrieved from Edwin Booth's body, the next obstacle would be obtaining a viable sample from a bone specimen believed to be John Wilkes Booth's, preserved in Lucite, at the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

A panel judges such requests, based on their merits and social, legal and ethical implications, officials said.

"We do not approve destructive testing on nonrenewable historical artifacts," said Timothy Clarke Jr., a spokesman for the museum.

Possible harm to the artifact must be weighed against the benefits of the testing, said Sharon A. Smith, president of the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia.

"It's a question of preserving the physical evidence of history and not putting it at risk," said Smith, who believes the accepted version of what happened at the Garrett farm.

"If the preponderance of evidence is that this is a myth, then should we be investing scarce historic resources?"

Historians such as Herman, though, say the test "wouldn't destroy the sample." A tiny drill could extract what's needed.

"If it compares favorably, that's the end of the controversy," Herman said. "That was Booth in the barn, end of case.

"If it doesn't match, you change American history," he said. "Booth would have a fine time making headlines in the newspapers again. Someone else was shot" at the Garrett farm in that case, he said.

Booth descendants "always refer to that man as the 'body in the barn,' never John Wilkes Booth," Hulme added. "If historians are so convinced they're right, let them prove it."
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Carolyn, if you are a friend of Lois Trebisacci could you ask her whether she has autosomal dna possibly at Gedmatch. I'd like to find out one way or the other whether there is a match to Martha Lizola/Izola Mills' descendants? I'm not very good at cold calls and she probably thought I was pulling some sort of scam. On the contrary I'm not writing any books or magazine articles and am just looking for the truth.
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06-23-2019, 08:12 AM
Post: #17
RE: Booth's Grandchild To Wed
About a year ago I posted something in a local Facebook page about a local property that was owned by Edwin Booth. Out of the blue, I received a response from Kristin Booth Rathbun, who apparently lives locally. I gave her the link to the "Identification of Booth's Body' thread in this forum in September 2018, but I have not heard from her since. She may be on this page. She and her mother were part of the failed exhumation lawsuit in Baltimore. Here is an interesting tidbit: https://jwb1865.livejournal.com/54801.ht...eKXqF9xu9E
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