New Booth Pic?

[Gene C]

Getting back to our barber Simon Jefferson.....

Quoting from the Times News
"It was during one of those visits when Booth reportedly told Tamaqua barber Simon Jefferson about his plans to shoot the president.

Jefferson was the first black resident of the community and claimed to be a descendant of Thomas Jefferson through slave Sally Hemmings."

According to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation - the Jefferson Monticello web site....
"Ten years later, TJF and most historians believe that, years after his wife’s death (1782), Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of Sally Hemings mentioned in Jefferson's records, including Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston Hemings"

https://www.monticello.org/site/plantati...ef-account

https://www.monticello.org/site/plantati...r-children
Simon Jefferson is not on the list of Sally's children.

According to the Republican Herold of July 31, 2012
"Ultimately, Jefferson's warnings went unheard as Lincoln was killed a month later despite Jefferson attending Lincoln's second inauguration in Washington, D.C. The cemetery lists Jefferson as 100 years old when he died Aug. 26, 1886."

I think Simon was an old man who liked to tell tall tales and the newspaper reporters like to repeat them, without calling them into question.
(which might hurt newspaper and book sales, and the attention they get by sensationalizing the story.