The Forgotten Story of John Wilkes Booth’s Family
John Wilkes Booth overshadows his family’s legendary acting legacy
“Think no more of him as your brother; he is dead to us now, as he soon must be to all the world, but imagine the boy you loved to be in that better part of his spirit, in another world.”— Edwin Booth to his sister, Asia Booth Clarke
Most people in America associate the Booth name with John Wilkes Booth, the actor who shot and killed Abraham Lincoln. Before John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln, however, the Booth family was the most prominent acting family in America. Booth’s older brother, Edwin Booth, and his father, Junius Brutus Booth, are commonly known as some of the best Shakespearean actors in history.
Less people know that John Wilkes Booth’s older brother, Edwin Booth, once saved the life of Robert Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s son. According to John S. Goff, the author of Robert Todd Lincoln: A Man in His Own Right, near the end of the Civil War, Robert Lincoln boarding a train in Jersey City, New Jersey. He recalled being in a very crowded train platform with a narrow space between the train and the platform like most train…
