November 1864 Classified Ad by JWB

[Steve]

(11-09-2017 04:15 PM)Steve Wrote:  I suppose it's possible the "J. B. Wilkes" ad as a whole has a cipher message hidden in it but I think the specific phrase "four to six rooms" is just common want ad language for people looking for a house to rent with 4 to 6 rooms.

I do have an alternative theory of why Booth would have created the ad if it wasn't a cipher:

Say, Booth meets John Surratt in October 1864 in Montreal. Surratt tells Booth that he has plans to move his family from Maryland to Washington DC. Surratt had been the local postmaster from his father's death in August 1862 until being fired in November 1863 for disloyalty (he had already become a Confederate spy). Surratt and his sister moved into the Washington boardinghouse around the first of November 1864. What if placing the ads was a way of creating a plausible connection between Booth and Surratt if the link between the two had somehow been discovered. Surratt being removed from his postmaster job for disloyalty could've put suspicion on Booth but Booth could point to the ad and claim this was how he met Surratt. Later on, they stage the December 1864 meeting with witnesses to conceal their prior meeting and no longer need the ads for a fake backstory of how they know each other.

Based on some subsequent postings by others, I just wanted to clarify this earlier post. I wasn't advocating for the above theory but offering as a possible explanation of why Booth would post the ad just before he left Washington for a couple of weeks.