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"Was Peanuts of Italian descent?"

This is actually part of the folklore of the assassination. In the first half of the 20th century, there was a D.C. gentleman (probably what we call a "street person" today) who advertised cough drops on the streets while also claiming to have been Peanuts John in the alley in 1865. I have talked to several old-timers who remembered him in the 1920s and 30s.

Cough Drop Joe Ratto was Italian, and the gentlemen who had met him said that he claimed he had a bump on his head from where Booth had struck him with the butt of his knife while mounting the mare in the alley.

I remember, when I first heard the story, that I didn't think there was much of an Italian immigrant community in D.C. during the Civil War. The little research I did showed that the area did not attract Italian workers because it was a government town, not a factory town. The main wave of Italians came from 1880 to 1920, when the skilled stonemasons and artists were in demand for the booming construction that the government buildings brought on.