The Lincoln Conspiracy

Twisted Roots: The Family of John Wilkes Booth

The short life of John Wilkes Booth is filled with drama, not all of it on stage.  Indeed, his personal story reads like fiction, from his birth as the son of a theater legend to his death as the most wanted man in America.

Junius Brutus Booth

His father, Junius Brutus Booth, is a towering figure in the history of the American stage. Within months of his 1821 debut in the United States, the British-born tragedian was hailed as the greatest classical actor in the country, even though he was only in his mid-twenties. He settled in Baltimore and invested his growing fortune in a 150-acre spread in rural Maryland, which he dubbed "The Farm". There, he and Mary Ann Holmes would raise their children.


The elder Booth was universally regarded as brilliant. He was also universally regarded as “difficult”. He was prone to deep bouts of what we now know to be depression. He was also given to behavior characterized, charitably, as eccentric – crowing like a rooster from a theater balcony during a love scene, or strolling naked down a city street. And his capacity for liquor achieved legendary status. Theater owners tried to control his access to alcohol, sometimes locking him in a hotel room between performances in the hope of maintaining his sobriety. Booth overcame such obstacles, in one instance by pushing a straw through the keyhole in his hotel room door to sip from a bottle on the other side.

Mary Ann Holmes Booth

Back at "The Farm", Mary Ann presided over a growing brood of children. She would give birth to ten, six of whom survived childhood. The ninth entered the world on Thursday, May 10, 1838. He was named in honor of an English Member of Parliament who was a vocal supporter of American Independence. John Wilkes Booth, like Abraham Lincoln, was born in a log cabin.


The younger Booth and all his siblings were prohibited from attending his father’s plays. Even so, the household was steeped in the traditions of the classical theater and the figure of the often-absent Junius Brutus towered over it. The children and their mother spent summers on "The Farm" (later expanded and re-named "Tudor Hall") and winters in Baltimore.

It was in the city, when John Wilkes Booth was just eight years old, that a real-life drama shook the foundation of the Booth family. A young man arrived, claiming to be the son of the country’s most prominent actor. Local residents dismissed his claim, since the Booth family was well known in Baltimore. What they didn’t know was Junius Brutus had left a wife and son behind in  Europe.

The young man summoned his mother. Adelaide Delannoy Booth was so incensed to learn of her husband’s second life, she booked passage on the first ship to America. It sank. Undeterred, she jumped on the next available ship and finally arrived in Maryland to lay claim to her son’s birthright. Once in Baltimore, Adelaide learned her husband was not only famous, but also prosperous. She wrote her sister in Brussels, “I don’t want to do anything to prevent him from making money, so I shall wait till he returns… then my lawyers will go off on him like a bomb.”

Tudor Hall, the Booth country home, was constructed by the same contractor who built Ford's Theatre

The truth finally came out, aided by the rightful Mrs. Booth parading up and down before the Booth house on Exeter Street, screaming that the children inside were “bastards”. One can imagine the trauma such a display caused the young John Wilkes. To his credit, Junius Brutus had consistently provided financial support for the wife and son he had abandoned to run off with Mary Ann Holmes (who was a flower girl outside a London theater when they met).

Junius Brutus Booth with son Edwin, age 13

It took two years for the shocking drama to unfold. Adelaide finally agreed to a divorce, paving the way for Junius Brutus and Mary Ann to wed on May 10, 1851 – John Wilkes Booth’s thirteenth birthday.  A year and a half later, Junius Brutus Booth was dead, the apparent victim of his own excesses.