One more post, on one broken leg.

[Dave Taylor]

(09-13-2013 12:47 AM)Troy Cowan Wrote:  Dave, why are you asking me about the traditional story? You should be asking Laurie.
But, again, you are asking me and my answer is-at the Rappahannock River crossing after three of Mosby's soldiers arrive, David introduces himself as Boyd and introduces another man standing there as James William Boyd. I believe that it was James W. Boyd and Booth was still hiding under the mattress in the wagon.

After the three crossed the Rappahannock, Booth reached in his pockets to get the money he owed Boyd for his services. Booth discovered the money was missing. He asked Boyd to go back across the Rappahannock and see if he could find his missing items. Booth couldn't wait out in the open, so he went on to the Garrett's, leaving Herold to wait for Boyd. Booth told Herold that if Boyd found the money that he and Boyd were to go to Bowling Green and buy him a new pair of shoes and then meet him back at the Garrett's the following day. The next day a troop of soldiers passed the Garrett's house and Booth decides he needs to move on. He headed for his farm and his lover, Izola.

Booth left the Garrett farm in the afternoon on the next day after his arrival. That night Boyd and Herold arrive at the Garrett's and they are shone the way to the corn crib where Boyd is mistaken for Booth.

Troy,

I am of the understsnding that it would be an act of futility for me to debate with you why your information above is incorrect, however for the purposes of others who might read this forum and believe what you have written to be even slightly plausible, I feel the need to correct it.

There are countless sources I could use to show the true timeline of events as they occurred at the Garrett farm, but I think it would be succinct enough to quote from Rev. Richard Baynham Garrett, who was 12 years old when John Wilkes Booth visited and was killed at his father's farm. He replied to a letter written by a man who was investigating Finis Bates' similar theory that John Wilkes Booth escaped his death. Like Mr. Cowan's theory, both rely on another man taking the place Booth in the barn. To these claims Rev. Garrett writes, "...it is a fact that on the second day of his stay at my father's home, Booth became alarmed at the passing of some soldiers in sight of the house and hobbled on his crutches to some woods back of the house where he remained for an hour or two. Mr. Bates in his letter to me alludes to this fact and asks 'How do you know that the same man came back from the woods that came into the woods?' Did he think us a set of fools that we should not know a man in broad daylight that we had been entertaining for two days?"

The truth is, David Herold returned to the Garretts on April 25th before the federal troops went by the house. Davy is the one who helped Booth into the woods to hide and he is the one who retrieved him after they passed. If it was a different person who came back, the Garretts would have noticed. After the woods incident, Booth and Davy had a nice sit down dinner with the Garrett family and proceeded to talk with the family on the porch later. Jack and Will Garrett escorted Booth and Herold into the barn that night due to the odd behavior of going into the woods, and Herold's obvious lies about his fictitious time in the Confederate service. Jack and Will locked the pair in the tobacco house, and slept in the corn crib to make sure the pair made no attempt to steal their horses. All of this is supported with actual documentation and period evidence.