New Development in Booth Case Coming Soon

[Steve]

(06-21-2024 05:06 PM)Dave Taylor Wrote:  I'm hoping to resurrect this thread somewhat as I'm trying to make sense of all the great work the Steves have done regarding the Leadville John Wilkes Booth who died in 1916. In July, the family and I are taking a road trip to Colorado and I was going to try to visit Leadville and find this JWB's grave while I am there. But I'm having trouble parsing all of the information in this thread together. Just who do we believe the Leadville John Wilkes Booth was?

Sorry Dave, I didn't see this post you made last year to make a comment before your trip.

Firstly, a new Find A Grave page for him was created after my initial posts about this 6 years ago:


https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/2713...lkes-booth




So, here are my thoughts on the Leadville John Wilkes Booth:

- I believe he is the same John Wilkes Booth who married Louisa Payne in 1872 in Tennessee and was the father of Laura Ida Booth (b.1873) for the following reasons

1. Both John Wilkes Booths were carpenters.

2. The Leadville Booth first unquestionably appears in the record in 1874 in Cheyenne, Wyoming where he marries another woman Dolly Baker. The JWB who married Louisa abandoned her while she was pregnant with Laura Ida. That fits neatly into the timeline where Leadville Booth first appears in Cheyenne.

3. The Leadville Booth's obituary published in the Leadville Herald in 1916 says that he had a prior wife who "died" in 1872. I've reposted the obituary below and it makes a lot of wild (and definitely wrong) claims but the timeline for the first wife to no longer be a part of his life matches pretty well.




- Do I think he was a son of Junius Brutus Booth Jr.? Probably not, unless better evidence comes up, for the following reasons:

1. There's no record of such a son.

2. The obituary says that Leadville Booth was born in Massachusetts in 1848 with his mother being Agnes Booth, but then later on it says his father remarried in 1867 to Agnes Booth (ie Mrs Harry Perry). Since the obituary's information is probably coming from Dolly, I can't tell if it's a mistake on her part or his.

3. There are other wild fantastical features in the Leadville Booth obituary, like his first wife dying in a circus accident or him being an escaped murder witness. (I kind of wonder if that second story was created to explain his actions if he was being careful to try and not get caught just in case if there were relatives of Louisa looking for him.) I checked newspapers for accounts of such a circus accident but couldn't find any. I also checked for newspaper stories of a similar fleeing murder witness but can't find any close enough matches so far.

4. I don't think the information on Junius Brutus Booth Jr.'s life matches well, but Dave you'd probably be a better judge than me on that point.

31 December 1916 Herald Democrat of Leadville, CO