Month: April 2024

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Unexpected Lincoln – The Other Booth Brother in Manchester-by-the-Sea

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Junius_Brutus_Booth_Jr_-_Brady-HandyWe all know John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. And then there was Edwin Booth, the great Shakespearean actor known for his performances of Hamlet. But there was another Booth brother in the acting business, and you won’t believe where he showed up in this edition of Unexpected Lincoln.

Junius Brutus Booth, Jr. was the eldest son and namesake of the great British/American actor (not surprisingly named Junius Brutus Booth, Sr.). The Senior Junius Booth was considered one of the greatest actors of his time, that is, when he wasn’t having mental health and drinking issues. After abandoning his wife and son in England, Junius Senior absconded to the United States with Mary Ann Holmes, a flower girl he has just met. They had twelve children together, most notably the three actor brothers and their sister Asia. Junius Junior was the least known of the three, an okay actor that never reached the fame (and infamy) of his two younger siblings. Only once did the three brothers perform together on stage, in Julius Caesar (ironically, or perhaps presciently, Caesar and Brutus entered into John Wilkes’s thought processes when contemplating the assassination of Lincoln).

Booth, Jr., like all of the Booth actors, had an erratic life, including three marriages. The first was brief, the second died giving birth to their only child (who somehow lived a long life, dying at age 78 in 1937). Booth, Jr. was out in California for much of the Civil War, returning east in 1867 to become manager of the Boston Theatre, and married an Australian-born widow, Marion Agnes (Rookes) Perry, who was also an actress and dancer thereafter known as Agnes Booth.

Here’s where the unexpected comes in.

While managing the Boston Theatre (in, obviously, Boston, Massachusetts), Booth Jr. started a hotel and summer theater operation in Manchester-by-the-Sea, a Massachusetts seacoast town on Cape Ann north of Boston. [BTW, there was a critically acclaimed film of the same name starring Casey Affleck in 2016 that is definitely worth seeing]. I’m quite familiar with Manchester-by-the-Sea as it’s close to my hometown and my grandmother lived there for 102 years. I was completely unaware, however, that the aforementioned Junius Brutus Booth, Jr. had a hotel and summer stock theater there and, in fact, is buried in the cemetery I had passed hundreds of times.

Booth House_Masconomo House_Manchester MA

Having recently discovered this fact, I made a beeline for Manchester on my recent road trip to New England. And there it was. First, the hotel. On the narrow road just before the famous Singing Beach was an old house (above) that I had barely noticed on my many walking trips down that road. The main house is where Junius and Agnes lived while they let out rooms in the hotel extension next door. Most of the hotel portion burned down early in the 20th century, but a small part of it remains as the residence of the current owners, who now make the main house (the original that survived the fire) available for rental at a hefty price per night. It’s a short walk to the beach. This is the house that Booth built.

After finding the house (which, to be honest, could use some landscaping work), I drove up the road to the Rosedale Cemetery. I had seen a photo of the gravestones on Find-a-Grave (an incredibly useful website for finding dead people) but it didn’t give a location in the cemetery. This was the third cemetery I visited on this particular road trip; the first two conveniently told me the exact location. This one didn’t but the photo seemed to show the graves near a granite wall, so I circled the cemetery perimeter looking for a granite edge. Almost giving up (the cemetery is mostly ringed by a wrought iron fence), I suddenly noticed the unique shape of Junius, Jr.’s tombstone. Quickly pulling over into a miraculously available parking spot, I confirmed that this was the correct spot. In this section, the wrought iron fence sat atop a short granite wall base.

Junius Booth’s gravestone is literally an open book, which is how I was able to locate it so quickly. The book appears open to its middle pages and sits on a short pedestal such that the top is maybe three feet off the ground. The inscription is worn with age but still legible if you look closely. Oddly, it says he died in September 1884 while all the other information says he died in 1883 at age 61. Next to him is the scroll-like gravestone of his last wife, Marion Agnes Schoeffel. Yes, that’s Agnes Booth. Even though she remarried to a man named John B. Schoeffel, Agnes chose to be buried next to her more famous second husband and three of their children. The next Junius in line, their son Junius Brutus Booth III, died by suicide in 1912 and is buried in Brightlingsea, Essex, England.

Like his brother Edwin, Junius Jr. had been hauled into Old Capitol Prison in Washington, DC after their more infamous brother John Wilkes had assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Both Edwin and Junius Jr. were interrogated and released, and both went on to continuing careers in the theater after short hiatuses. By the way, Edwin had an encounter with another Lincoln, having famously saved the life of Robert Lincoln at a train station in late 1864 or early 1865. See more about that incident here. Junius ended up in New England, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Unexpected Lincoln is on the trail of other little-known connections to Lincoln, including more from my New England road trip that I’ll relate soon.

Photo credits: Top = Junius Brutus Booth Jr. by Mathew Brady, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; Second from Top: Masconomo House, Manchester, MA from rental listing; Grouping = Booth gravestones, Rosedale Cemetery, Manchester, MA by David J. Kent

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Abraham Lincoln Assassination Science

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Lincoln mourning ribbonApril 14, 1865, had been a busy day for Abraham Lincoln. The previous week he had walked through Richmond, arriving back in Washington to a telegram saying the South’s main army would fight no more. On this Good Friday, Lincoln felt rejuvenated, relieved that the war would soon end and he could focus his second term on reconstructing the Union. The day started with a welcome visit. Captain Robert Lincoln, the president’s son, returned to the city in time to join Lincoln for breakfast. Robert brought firsthand witness to the recent surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. Many formal interviews later (including with former New Hampshire senator John P. Hale, whose daughter Lucy was later discovered to be secretly engaged to John Wilkes Booth), Lincoln held a cabinet meeting in which he related a recurring dream of a ship “moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore.”

Perhaps inspired by the dream or simply his interest in technology, Lincoln and Mary went out for a carriage ride and found their way to the Washington Navy Yard. After touring the vessels and talking with Navy Yard staff, the Lincolns returned to the White House and shortly thereafter set out again for what they had hoped would be a relaxing night at the theater. Our American Cousin, a comedy, should lift their spirits as this long grueling Civil War appeared to be coming to an end.

Instead, Lincoln’s life ended. John Wilkes Booth had slipped into the president’s box at Ford’s Theatre and fired a single shot into the back of Lincoln’s head. Booth then slashed Rathbone before leaping from the box to the stage, yelled Sic Semper Tyrannus, “Thus Ever to Tyrants,” and ran out the stage door into the alley, where he escaped on horseback. In contrast to the advanced repeating weapons that Lincoln so often advocated, Booth’s gun was a Deringer, made to fire one lead ball. A Deringer (the original design, as opposed to a derringer, which is any similar gun by other manufacturers) is a single-shot, muzzle-loading, seven-groove rifled, percussion pocket pistol. Most Deringers were .41 caliber, but the one used by Booth was .44 caliber, a remarkably large ball for such a small gun. Prior to entering the theater, Booth loaded the Deringer by pouring ten grains by weight of black powder into the muzzle before ramming in one lead ball wrapped in a tiny cloth patch. A percussion cap was put in place and the hammer rested gently up until the time Booth pulled the trigger.

As I wrote in a previous post:

Dr. Charles Leale examined the fallen president and knew immediately the wound was mortal. Twenty-three years old and only six weeks after receiving his medical degree from Bellevue Hospital Medical College, Leale found himself in charge of the shocking murder scene. He had been sitting in the dress circle at Ford’s Theatre when “about half past ten…the report of a pistol was distinctly heard and about a minute after a man of low stature with black hair and eyes was seen leaping to the stage beneath, holding in his hand a drawn dagger.” Rushing to the Presidential Box, Leale observed Lincoln “in a state of general paralysis.” Lincoln’s labored breath was intermittent, no pulse could be detected, and he was “profoundly comatose.”

Leale’s description of his actions that night grew more detailed and extravagant in repeated telling over the years, but the basic facts remained the same. He was joined in the box by surgeons Doctors Charles F. Taft and Albert F. A. King. They agreed that Lincoln would not survive the rugged trip back to the White House yet were concerned that the president should not die in a theater—still considered a dubious location, especially on Good Friday. He was carried out the front door and across the street to be placed in the small rear room of Petersen’s boarding house, where he was laid out diagonally on a bed too short for his elongated body. These doctors were joined at the Petersen house by several other surgeons, including Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes and Lincoln’s personal physician, Robert K. Stone. Stone noted that the wound was plugged by coagulating blood, bone debris, and brain tissue, causing a buildup of cranial pressure and “stertorous” (noisy and labored) breathing. “On cleaning this away,” wrote Stone lyrically, “the wound bled steadily . . . and respiration became instantly as sweet and regular as an infant.” Lincoln never regained consciousness. A long metal Nélaton’s probe was inserted into the wound several times to determine the path of the ball. Nothing more could be done except to monitor the president’s pulse and breathing over a night of waiting for the inevitable.

Lincoln’s death, and that of his son Willie, led to advances in embalming science, which I discussed in this previous post.

I dive much more into the assassination and the related science in my book, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius, from which this post is adapted.

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Lincoln’s Fateful 11th of April

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Lincoln MemorialAbraham Lincoln had a busy day, this April 11, 1865. There were meetings, then more meetings, and proclamations (and more proclamations), a pass for his friend, and a request to General Grant. That evening he would give a speech that would cost him his life.

Early in the day he consulted with General Benjamin Butler. Butler seemed to be involved in everything important happening in the war, from the workaround to avoid more bloodshed in Baltimore as northern troops first passed through the southern-leaning city on the way to protect Washington. Then there was New Orleans and Fortress Monroe and that whole business with Butler declaring that any enslaved people who escaped into Union lines would be considered contraband of war, and thus would not be returned to the South. It was this topic – what to do with the freed people – that Lincoln and Butler discussed on this fateful day, just two days after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

Despite the surrender of Lee’s army, the war was not over. Lincoln issues several proclamations closing certain ports of entry and defining foreign port privileges. He also modifies the blockade of Key West, Florida. The end was near, but there was more to be done.

Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln’s friend and the current Marshall of the District of Columbia, stopped by the White House with Secretary of the Interior John P. Usher to discuss a proposed trip to Richmond. Now that the Confederate capital had fallen, Lamon was to serve as Lincoln’s eyes for a reconstruction convention. Lincoln writes Lamon a pass: “Allow the bearer, W.H. Lamon & friend, with ordinary baggage to pass from Washington to Richmond and return.” Lamon would still be in Richmond four days later.

The meetings were not over. Secretary of the Navy in his diary describes a contentious cabinet meeting in which cotton trade is the chief topic. Lincoln had authorized some restricted trade of cotton with the South to help northern textile mill owners get back to business, but there were questions as to whether it was aiding the South as well. Meanwhile, Mrs. Lincoln was writing to General Grant that the President was ill but “would be very much pleased to see you this…evening,” adding that she would like Grant “to drive…with us to see the illumination.”

Lincoln may have been ill, but he was also busy putting the finishing touches on what would turn out to be the last public speech he would give in his presidency, and indeed, in his life.

The night before, when news of Lee’s surrender was ballyhooed in the papers, a crowd had gathered at the White House and chanted for Lincoln to give a speech. He begged off, saying the occasion called for thoughtfully considered remarks rather than an off-the-cuff victory speech. When he arrived at the window on the 11th he gave a much longer, and much more serious, speech than the crowd anticipated. Focusing on the newly approved constitution for reconstructing Louisiana, the first former Confederate state to do so. While generally in favor of the effort, he did note that:

It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.

Lincoln had been pushing for African American voting rights in private letters to the military governor in Louisiana, but the legislature thought that was too radical for the times and left it out. Lincoln’s pronouncement that at least some African Americans – certainly those who risked their lives serving in the Union army and navy – should have the ability to vote was the first time he would publicly make his views clear. At least one person in the audience found it to be too much. John Wilkes Booth heard Lincoln’s call, and after expressing his racial hatred, vowed, “That is the last speech he will ever give.”

He was right. Four days later, on the evening of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth slipped into the president’s box at Ford’s Theatre and fatally shot the seated Lincoln in the back of the head. Lincoln died the next morning never having regained consciousness.

Assassinated, in large part, because of that fateful speech on April 11th.

[Photo Credit: David J. Kent at the Lincoln Memorial]

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Lincoln Wins the Sand Bar Case

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Abraham Lincoln photoOn April 4, 1860, a mere six weeks before he would be nominated as the Republican candidate for president, Abraham Lincoln wins a case formally known as Johnston v. Jones & Marsh.

Lincoln’s experience getting stuck on the mill dam came in handy when he took on one of his most informative cases, commonly called the Sand Bar Case. The case was revealing because, in an age where trial transcripts were almost never kept, journalist Robert Hitt was paid to sit through the entire trial and create a comprehensive 482-page trial transcript, although he omitted the closing arguments.

The case revolved around the accretion of new land created by various efforts to turn Lake Michigan’s shoreline at Chicago into a practical harbor, something nature had not designed it to do. Channels were dug, piers were built, and a great deal of sand was dredged. Eventually, Chicago had a harbor. In 1833, the government cut a channel across lakefront lots owned separately by William Johnston and William Jones. A newly erected pier caused the accretion of nearly 1,200 feet of new land, roughly six acres, which both Johnston and Jones claimed as their own. After four trials, the last of which found for Johnston, Jones appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the judgment and sent it back to the lower courts. At this point, Jones retained Lincoln, and after an eleven-day trial, the jury sided with Jones.

The case highlighted Lincoln’s knowledge of natural environments and his clear, logical communication to jurors. A legal colleague, while not specifically talking about the Sand Bar Case, seemed to capture the flavor of it when he called Lincoln “an admirable tactician” who “steered this jury from the bayous and eddies of side issues and kept them clear of the snags and sand bars, if any were put in the real channel of his case.” Fellow lawyer Leonard Swett also suggested Lincoln had a knack for focusing the juror on the key question while minimizing the rest. “By giving away six points and carrying the seventh, he carried the case.” Lincoln demonstrated this Euclidean logic and technical expertise in a letter to Johnson’s attorney Robert Kinzie before the trial, querying him on such technical matters as the intersection of the pier, the accreted new lakeshore, and the properties in question, as well as the timing of the land formation and any changes since the initial pier was erected. During the trial, Lincoln’s background in surveying helped him cross-examine the surveyor George Snow, catching that there were two maps created, each one alternatively benefiting the claims of the two litigants. Lincoln’s questioning of the land surveys was key to winning the case. He was paid $350 for his services (about $11,600 today).

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Fire of Genius]

[Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Abraham_Lincoln_by_Nicholas_Shepherd,_1846-crop]

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.