Chris Ritter

[Pamela]

It seems that Chris Ritter was crazy after all. A Christopher Ritter died of chronic mania with heart disease in a hospital for the insane Feb 10, 1901 in Easthaven Indiana. Parents born in Germany, occupation, butcher, widower. He had been treated for 4 years. His birthplace was Germany and his parents names are on the certificate but hard to read. They could be a match.

He also did live in Arkansas, as he said. After living in Aurora Indiana, as listed in the 1880 census, he was mentioned in the recollections of a pioneer in Green County, Arkansas. He moved from Indiana, kept the post office in Beulah, which meant keeping the mail in his pockets, and opened a meat market. Sometimes the mail had bloody fingerprints but nobody minded. His wife's name matched and two of his children were mentioned, Mary and Preston, matching children in the Aurora census, and these children stayed in Arkansas. There is even a picture of Preston as an older man in a group photo that looks to be in the 1920s or 1930s . There is no exact date, but he was one of 77 petitioners to have the town of Paragould (near Beulah) incorporated in 1883.
Edwin Brink was a good friend of Booth's and was the second actor arrested on
April 14, the first being Hawk. Brink drank with Booth the night of the 14th and walked with him to the theater. He talked about Booth in a couple of newspaper articles in 1888. He sung in a quartet in the play. He had also served in the Union service. There is a lot of info about Brink in Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination by Thomas Bogar. It is possible that Ritter could have seen him perform, thus knowing that he was still alive in 1897 because he performed in Canada and the midwest.