Hi ya'all! Hope you all are doing well. Long time no see. Busy, busy with a lot of things. And still working in a lower gear. I have not forgotten you. I found a very, very interesting article, with lots of information I didn’t know about JWB’s brother Joseph. If you don’t know where Joe’s first wife was interred, or on which steamer Joe came to New York when arrested in May 1865, or why he went to Australia, or if you want to know if he was indeed “insane”, or that he had more than 1 child, or …. stay in touch. I will inform you later this evening or tomorrow. Will first try to copy or scan the article (from 1958, and affected by the ravages of time). There are numerous books and articles written on the Booth family. We know a lot about the Booth boys John Wilkes (of course), Edwin (that great tragedian) and Junius Brutus Jr., but (I’m speaking about myself) I (we ?) know much less about Joseph, only that he was the least prominent brother or the longest living Booth. I can’t write more than 1 page about him with substantive info, until today! Yes, there is a lot more than that he was a medical doctor, married two times and interred at the Booth lot at Green Mount, Baltimore. A lot more. I think the article is more than 15 pages in .docx or . pdf format. Stay in touch.

Hi Kees - good to hear from you while sorry you are still in "low gear" - hope spring will push the gear higher!!! I'm looking forward to another great input from you!

Kees, I second Eva!

The article I referred to was published in the spring of 1983 in Maryland’s Historical Magazine and written by John C. Brennan. I’ve made an OCR-scan and converted it into PDF and into editable Word. If you are interested, you can download the article in PDF-format here:

https://app.box.com/s/u2pm87bzj3npkwllqh7z9sh3m162h5sn

and here in .DOCX format

https://app.box.com/s/gbt4dh8l7ddjow64p8urmutp5qj8793r

I’ve learned a lot more about Joseph Adrian Booth.

Two things I want to know more about:

(1) I did know that Joseph was married twice and that his first wife (Margaret Cecilia Hatfield) died in August 1884 after two years of marriage. I didn’t know how old she was (37 or 39 ?), where she passed away (Long Branch, New Jersey), the cause of death (puerperal sepsis) and did not even know that Joseph had a child in his first marriage (which died shortly after birth). The most surprising to me was that Margaret was interred at the Booth Family Burial Site at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore (with her baby) in an unmarked grave. So both wives and both children of Joseph are interred there. I always thought that there were eight marked graves at the Booth plot (Junius Brutus, Mary Ann Holmes, Richard, Rosalie, Asia, Joseph, his 2nd. wife Cora, and his son Edwin) and four unmarked (Mary Ann, Frederick, Elizabeth and JWB). My question: who knows more about Margaret Cecilia Hatfield (dob, her parents, her siblings) and the exact location of her grave at the Booth plot?

(2) Joseph arrived May 11, 1865 by steamer Golden Gate in New York City (from San Francisco, via Panama) and was arrested and (on May 12) interrogated. But when exactly was he released? I googled and found conflicting info. Some (not reliable) accounts say that he was “a couple of weeks” in custody, other say “a couple of nights” and I even read he was confined in the Old Capitol Prison (!?). I think (but am nut sure) he was released shortly after his interrogation in New York City. Who has more information?

Thank you as always!

Thank you for sharing the info on Joseph. I didn't know that the 1st wife and child were in Greenmount. Kees, I know about working in a lower gear. Right now, I'm working in 3rd gear with a 5 speed transmission. I'm hoping to upshift soon to 4th gear and hope to be in 5th by the end of the summer. You too will get back in form.

Thanks for sharing this! I'm just beginning to learn more about the Booth family so I'm looking forward to reading the article.

John C. Brennan, the author of said article, was a godfather to the Surratt Society and our museum. He and James O. Hall were indefatigable in their search for anything and everything to do with the Lincoln assassination.

Did some research on Cora Estelle Booth, Joseph's 2nd wife. Want to share the following two items.

   

and

   

Does anybody know if it was either Joseph or John Wilkes who accompanied their mother, along with the new married couple during the honeymoon of Edwin and his new bride, Mary Devlin at Niagara Falls during the summer of 1860?

In July 1860 - Sept. 1860, the following notice about Edwin Booth's honeymoon in Niagara Falls was reprinted over and over in several newspapers. Including this one from page 4 of the August 20, 1860 issue of The Baltimore Sun:

   

The brother who accompanied Edwin, his mother, and his wife is never named in the short blurbs. It can't be Junius Jr. I know John Wilkes Booth was at the wedding and from newspaper accounts I think he arrived in Baltimore around July 24th, but I don't know for sure where he was after Edwin's wedding because there's a gap in Art Loux's book from July 9th until JWB's performance in Montgomery on Sept. 12th. So I don't know where JWB was in August.

I know that Joseph was in medical school in South Carolina in 1860 but I don't know enough of his timeline to know if excludes him from being in Niagara Falls or not.

Steve,

It was Joe who accompanied the newlyweds to Niagara, not John Wilkes. Asia wrote letter to her friend Jean Anderson on August 21, 1860 which said, "Mother and Joe are at Niagara with Ned and Miss Devlin or whatever they call her - Why don't she go under the Falls or try to swim in the whirlpool I wonder." Asia was never a fan of Mary Devlin Booth and wrote rather spitefully of her.

Dave

Thanks Dave! Straightening this out was very helpful!

(07-29-2019 08:25 PM)Dave Taylor Wrote:  Steve,

It was Joe who accompanied the newlyweds to Niagara, not John Wilkes. Asia wrote letter to her friend Jean Anderson on August 21, 1860 which said, "Mother and Joe are at Niagara with Ned and Miss Devlin or whatever they call her - Why don't she go under the Falls or try to swim in the whirlpool I wonder." Asia was never a fan of Mary Devlin Booth and wrote rather spitefully of her.

Dave

I am not a fan of Asia Booth Clarke, even though I think she had a hard life (at least emotionally). I have often wondered what a psychological analysis of her would determine...