Re: Booth family in Oklahoma
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In reply to:
Re: Booth family in Oklahoma
8/17/00
Hood County Texas Genealogical Society
"JOHN WILKES BOOTH" ON TOUR
by Alva Johnston
Saturday Evening Post - February 10, 1938
John Wilkes Booth - or "John," as he is generally called in outdoor amusement circles -
had his first prosperous season last year since 1864. He earned $20,000 in the year before
he killed Lincoln. How much he made last year is a trade secret, but it ran well into four
figures.
Historians have raised quibbles as to whether John is the authentic John Wilkes Booth; at
any rate, he is the authentic John Wilkes Booth of the street fairs and midways. John is not
a member of Equity or the Actors' Guild because of the technicality that he is no longer
living. He is America's leading mummy.
Historians of the old school allege that John Wilkes Booth was killed in Garrett's barn in
Virginia on April 26, 1865, twelve days after he assassinated Lincoln. Partisans of John
have another version. They say that Booth escaped from Garrett's barn and lived in Texas
and Oklahoma under the names of Ney, St. Helen, Ryan and George - principally under
the name of St. Helen. The Texas-Oklahoma Booth committed suicide by arsenic at Enid,
Oklahoma, on January 13, 1903. Forty pounds of affidavits say that this man was the
genuine John Wilkes Booth. At any rate, John, in a magnificent state of preservation, has
had an interesting professional life since 1903.
The postmortem career of this John Wilkes Booth, whether he belongs to history or
folklore, has been marked by almost continual failure and disaster. He has scattered
ill-luck around almost as freely as Tutankhamen is supposed to have done. Nearly every
showman who exhibited John has been ruined. Eight people were killed in 1920 in the
wreck of a circus train on which John was traveling. Bill Evans, the wealthy Carnival King
of the Southwest, who exhibited the mummy for years, was ruined financially; he died in
1933, shot in a Chicago holdup.
Finis L. Bates, a Memphis lawyer and original sponsor of John, died in 1923 after suffering
much ridicule because of a book he wrote on John. The Rev. Dr. Clarence True Wilson,
one of the great leaders of the prohibition movement, was an enthusiastic champion of
John; he experienced no ill effects, however, except that his heart was nearly broken by
repeal.
John has had a strange knockabout existence. He has been bought and sold, leased, held
under bond, kidnapped and seized for debt; has been repeatedly chased out of town by
local authorities for not having a license or for violating other ordinances; has been
threatened with hanging by indignant G.A.R. veterans. Up until 1937 he has been a
consistent money loser.
John's present owner is John Harkin, of Wheatfield, Indiana, formerly the chief tattooed
man of the Wallace-Hagenbeck circus. Harkin made a fortune in the circus and carnival
business, invested it in Chicago residential property and retired. But six years ago he saw
the mummy, was fascinated by it and bought it for $5000. John appealed strongly to Harkin
because Harkin is a rugged individualist in his interpretation of history; he holds, for
example, that Napoleon escaped after the Battle of Waterloo and that a dummy made up
to resemble him was sent to St. Helena.
The Villain of the Place
After making the purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Harkin set out in a battered exhibition
truck which can be converted into a small amusement palace. They traveled
economically. At night they slept on bunks on either side of the truck; John, who
was considered practically a member of the family, had a berth on the floor
between them.
Now and then they had streaks of luck. They struck it richest at Shawano,
Wisconsin, which is near the Menominee Indian Reservation. The Indians came
in droves.
Mr. Harkin made inquiries and learned that several years before, a white
schoolteacher on the reservation had stated that the assassin of Lincoln was an
Indian. The chief of the Menominee was so happy to discover that John was a
Caucasian that he ordered the entire tribe to attend the show. But Shawano was a
great exception. In Springfield, Missouri, for example, John played an entire
week to twenty-five cents.
In the meantime everything went wrong with Harkin's Chicago property. Negroes
moved into the block and Harkin's tenants moved out. John was seized by the
former owner because the last installment had not been paid. Harkin sold his real
estate for $300 above the mortgage in order to raise money to recover the
mummy.
If, as Charles Evans Hughes has said, truth is to be found even in affidavits, John
must be what he purports to be. When the exhibition truck is packed for
traveling, there is hardly room for the three occupants, so much space is taken up
by affidavits. Harkin complains that he is up to his neck in sworn statements all
the time. These documents have even silenced college professors, who inclined to
the reactionary view that John Wilkes Booth was killed in 1865.
Anyway, these affidavits have convinced Harkin. During all exhibitions he flaunts
a banner which reads, $1000 REWARD TO ANYONE WHO CAN PROVE
THAT THIS IS NOT JOHN WILKES BOOTH. That reward, according to the
showman, has never even been claimed.
So confident is the showman of the justice of his cause that, even when flat
broke, he has continued to hurl his $1000 challenge at the public. He has been
reduced to trading the colored electric bulbs which illuminate John at night shows
for gasoline to get to the next town; but even in this extremity, he has maintained
the $1000 challenge. He has been so impoverished that, in order to eat, he has
been forced to go to the hospitable Rio Grande Valley, where the farmers give
you all the vegetables you want for nothing; even in this emergency he has
continued to throw down his $1000 gage to the scholarship of America.
The spell of adversity which pursued John for many years was reversed last
season, when the Harkins became connected with the Jay Gould Million-Dollar
Show which toured Minnesota and South Dakota. The Jay Gould troupe
consisted of Mr. Gould and Mrs. Gould, their four daughters, four sons and three
daughters-in-law, plus a trained elephant, trained dogs and ponies and a
collection of midgets. Always on the lookout for a good cultural attraction, Jay
Gould annexed the John Wilkes Booth outfit last year. He made it pay. He is the
first showman who had the genius to operate a modern American mummy
successfully. After the million-dollar performance is completed, Gould steps to
the loud-speaker, delivers a lecture on John, and crowds swarm to see him.
Before Gould took general supervision over the attraction, its worst enemies were
skeptics who would look at John and jeeringly exclaim "Wax!" Mr. and Mrs.
Harkin tremble with indignation at the mere mention of wax. Their $5000
historical and educational item has for years been up against the unfair
competition of wax outlaws and heroes. Jay Gould solved this problem
immediately. His first move on hitting a new town is to summon the undertakers,
admit them free of charge and send them away raving. Even after decades of
rough carnival and sideshow life, John is a masterpiece compared to the
Pharaohs in the museums. He is as tough and leathery as a tackling dummy. One
reason for this is that the Enid undertaker used arsenic in embalming the body.
This is said to be the best preservative, but in recent years its use has generally
been forbidden, because it may be employed to destroy the evidence in cases
where murder has been perpetrated by arsenic. The fact that the suicide was by
arsenic is said to have been an additional factor in preserving this mummy.
Although the cry of "wax" was a business killer, other criticisms of John have
been helpful. Educators who come to show off their learning at the mummy's
expense are the show's best advertisements. John thrives on controversy of this
nature. A hot argument about his historical authenticity always brings in a good
house.
"There's nobody," said Harkin, "that we welcome so much as one of these
half-wise schoolteachers."
Another reason for the mummy's big season in 1937 was the volume of
newspaper controversy over the assassination of Lincoln. The subject was
opened upon a large scale by Otto Eisenschiml's book, Why Was Lincoln
Murdered? This author produced a vast amount of material suggesting that
Secretary of War Stanton was the ringleader of a plot to kill Lincoln and that
Stanton arranged to facilitate the escape of Booth. The Eisenschiml volume
makes it appear plausible that Booth might have lived for many years after 1865.
Another historical volume published last year which may promote John's future
career is This One Mad Act, by Izola Forrester, a granddaughter of John Wilkes
Booth, who presents evidence that members of her family were in personal
contact with the assassin for a generation after 1865. Izola Forrester, however, is
not impressed with the theory that the late St. Helen-Ney-Ryan-George, now
known as John, was her grandfather.
Finis L. Bates, of Memphis, did more than anybody else to make John famous,
but he also did more than anybody to discredit him. Bates was a
twenty-one-year-old lawyer in Granbury, Texas in 1872. He represented his
fellow townsman, John St. Helen, in an excise case. The two men became close
friends. John St. Helen fell ill. On what he apparently thought was his deathbed,
St. Helen called Bates and confessed to be John Wilkes Booth. Bates says he
saved St. Helen's, or Booth's, life on that occasion by rubbing him vigorously
from head to foot with "strong brandy." St. Helen made other deathbed
confessions and survived them, but in 1903 he ratified his final deathbed
confession by actually dying. There is documentary evidence of the honesty of
Bates in this matter. He wrote a letter to the War Department to see if he could get
a reward by delivering John Wilkes Booth alive. Rewards totaling $100,000 had
been offered by the War Department in 1865, but they had been collected by the
men who trapped the alleged Booth in the Garrett barn in Virginia. The War
Department wrote to Bates that it took "no interest" in the matter. Years after he
had sought to deliver Booth on the hoof, Bates identified the suicide at Enid as
the self-confessed assassin of Lincoln. An undertaker at Enid embalmed the body
on the expectation that the Booth family or the War Department would claim it. It
remained unclaimed for years; Bates finally procured it. This transfer was
sanctioned by an Oklahoma judge, apparently on the theory that the Memphis
lawyer would accord decent burial to his former client. Instead of this, Bates set
out to commercialize his acquisition. He leased and rented his old friend and
wrote a book with the title The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth, and the
subtitle, Written for the Correction of History.
This book is the greatest obstacle which the present champions of John have to
contend with. Published in 1908, it purports to related conversations between
Bates and St. Helen-Booth in 1872. During the years intervening, Bates had
steeped himself in the literature relating to the assassination. He got his historical
reading badly mixed up with his conversations with St. Helen. Although probably
made in good faith, many of the statements of Bates were easily proved to be
false. Even if Bates had established his case to a mathematical certainty, his
flowery and ridiculous style would have made skeptics of his readers.
Bates hired the body out to showmen from time to time. At the Waco Cotton
Palace about eighteen years ago, it attracted the attention of William Evans, the
Carnival King of the Southwest, who started John on his big-time career. Evans
hired the attraction at the rate of $1000 for every twenty weeks, the $1000 to be
paid in advance; he also posted a $40,000 bond as a guaranty that John would be
returned in good repair.
Bill Evans had made his start in the entertainment field by marrying one of his
own wives twenty times in twenty towns. Public weddings used to be big civic
celebrations in the Southwest, and Evans staged his like operas. He differed from
some of his competitors in that he always married the same bride, and in later life
he used to claim to be the greatest polymonogamist in the United States. Evans
would begin by stampeding newspaper offices with the romantic details of his
approaching outdoor nuptials. Hammering away at the slogan that "all the world
loves a lover," he convinced local merchants that there was no better way to
advertise than to give the happy couple wedding presents. From the sale of the
loot of twenty weddings he obtained a modest stake and soon had his own tent.
In time he became known as the Carnival King of the Southwest and the
possessor of the greatest freak-animal show in the country.
Evans had intended to use John as the headliner of his carnival, but the new
attraction was a disappointment from the start. John never paid expenses. In his
days on the legitimate stage, John Wilkes Booth had been a great actor. Some of
his contemporaries thought him greater than his father, Junius Brutus Booth, or
his brother, Edwin Booth. John Wilkes Booth was, however, an almost perfect
ham. Vanity was his ruling motive. His assassination of Lincoln was an act of
pure vanity. Booth had gone through the Civil War without fighting; he could not
bear to have the war heroes towering over him; he killed Lincoln in the hope of
stealing the show from the fighting men. The poor ham broke into history, but it
might have given him pause, back in 1865, if he could have looked forward to
1920 and could have seen what was left of him competing unsuccessfully with
bulldog-faced cows and six-legged sheep.
Evans did not blame John for his poor showing. He chiefly blamed the American
public-school system for its failure to make people history-conscious. He blamed
himself for over-estimating the serious-mindedness of carnival lovers. He
decided that it was necessary to detach John from the midway attractions and
send him on a separate tour under more dignified auspices. Before he would
work out his plan, however, the Evans carnival train was wrecked en route to
San Diego. John escaped intact, so the $40,000 bond was saved; but eight
employees and most of the freak animals were killed.
When the Carnival King was seeking to reorganize his show, John was
kidnapped. This was a serious matter; not only was the mummy costing Evans a
rental of $1000 every twenty weeks but its continued disappearance would mean
the forfeiture of the $40,000 bond. Week after week Evans ran an advertisement
in The Billboard, the Bible of the circus and carnival world, offering a reward of
$1000 for information leading to the recovery of John. One day he met the
alleged kidnaper on the street in San Diego. They had a
knock-down-and-drag-out fight, ending in jail. The controversy ended in a
stalemate. Evans had little chance of winning a civil suit, because it would be
impossible to establish title. The law is somewhat whimsical on the subject. It will
back up your property right in an ancient citizen of Egypt or Peru, but not in a
modern American citizen. The judge might not only throw the case out of court
but he might also order the body, if found, to be buried in accordance with the
California health laws.
Held for Ransom
Tex Rickard, for example, had a narrow escape from trouble when he exhibited
some stuffed bandits in Madison Square Garden. They were very bad men from
the Southwest and came to Tex with the highest credentials. Tex thought them
marvelous and used to stare at them by the hour, exclaiming from time to time, "I
never seed such a thing." The famous promoter was notified that the New York
law required them to be buried in three days, whether they were stuffed or not.
After that Tex ran the show like a speak-easy; kept two lookouts at the door and
allowed only his personal friends to enter.
The Carnival King had a wholesome respect for the courts and saw the folly of
going to law over the unburied dead. His problem was solved one day, however,
when the kidnaper of John came in and said: "I claim the reward. Pay me the
$1000 and I'll return him in good condition."
It was agreed that Evans should pay $500 ransom money in advance and $500
after the body had been restored. The Carnival King paid the first $500 in cash
and the second $500 in a rubber check. His next step was to return the mummy to
Finis L. Bates, of Memphis, and cancel the $40,000 bond. Bates died. His widow
was disappointed in her first efforts to market the Booth chattel, but she finally
sold it to the misguided Carnival King for $1000. It brought Evans nothing but
bad luck. He suffered setback after setback in the carnival business, until he
finally quit and retired to a small potato farm at Declo, Idaho. He took John with
him, and in the hope of getting small change from tourists, hung out a sign in
front of his farmhouse reading, SEE THE MAN WHO MURDERED LINCOLN.
An Echo of the Civil War
The mummy might have still been there, casting a mild blight over the potato
patch, except for the fact that an automobile drove into Declo one day in 1928
containing J.N. Wilkerson, a Kansas City lawyer and one of the leading
authorities on Booth. In the early 20's Mr. Wilkerson had picked up a set of
books called Modern Eloquence for $1.50 at a second-hand bookstore. Turning
its pages one day he had read the oration of Special Judge-Advocate John A.
Bingham against Booth's alleged co-conspirators in the assassination of Lincoln.
Among other things, Bingham had charged that Jeff Davis had offered a reward
of $100,000 for the assassination of Lincoln. Wilkerson, who had been born in
Alabama, believed this to be false. He first read the transcript of the trial and then
began to dig into the history of the period. He traced the movements of Booth in
Canada, where the conspiracy against Lincoln was organized. The first intention
had been to kidnap Lincoln and hold him as a hostage to compel the North to
exchange prisoners with the South; Grant having, in the later days of the war, put
a stop to the practice of exchanging.
The kidnapping plot fell through. Wilkerson collected evidence which convinced
him that the actual assassination was a Northern rather than a Southern plot; that
Stanton, Vice-President Johnson and other extreme haters of the Confederacy
wanted to put Lincoln out of the way because they were disturbed over his plans
for lenient treatment of the South. These Northern statesmen, as Wilkerson
interpreted his evidence, set the stage for Booth's crime and made arrangements
for Booth's escape. Wilkerson became convinced that another man had been
killed and buried in his stead. The investigator had gone deep into this before he
heard that an alleged mummy of Booth had been barnstorming the country.
Wilkerson wrote at once to Finis L. Bates, the original sponsor for the mummy,
but Bates in the meantime had died. The Kansas City historian dropped the
subject from his mind then until, as he happened to be motoring through Declo,
his attention was attracted by the sign, SEE THE MAN WHO MURDERED
LINCOLN.
Wilkerson looked up the broken Carnival King in his potato patch and asked
several questions that the King could not answer.
"To tell the truth," said the King, "I don't know whether it is the body of Booth or
not. They told me it was and I believed them."
"If it is Booth," said Wilkerson, "there ought to be a cut on the right eyebrow.
When he was playing Richard in Richard III, another actor slashed him over the
right eye with the sword in the duel scene."
The two men examined John and satisfied themselves that the scar was in its right
place.
"Booth's right thumb was broken when a curtain fell on it," continued Wilkerson.
"It was a deformity that made him very sensitive and he always tried to conceal it.
Let's take a look."
The Kansas City historian and the Carnival King satisfied themselves that the
mummy had Booth's deformed thumb.
"Now this ought to clinch it one way or another," said Wilkerson. "Booth had a
scar on the back of his neck. It was been described by Doctor May, of
Washington, who removed a wen from his neck. The wound was healing nicely
when, in a love scene, the famous actress Charlotte Cushman seized him in such
a violent embrace that the stitches were broken. An ugly scar resulted."
The two men turned John over. They found what they considered to be the scar.
This nearly convinced Wilkerson, but he still wanted to know more. He suggested
a tour through all the towns in the Southwest where John Wilkes Booth was
supposed to have ranged under various aliases from about 1870 until his suicide
in 1903. Wilkerson offered to break off his own trip and go along as barker for
John. The Carnival King figured that, with a real historian to gather affidavits
backing up the mummy, John might still have a future.
The trip was historically rich, but financially unprofitable. Here and there John
was a draw, but usually he lacked magnetism. After leaving Declo, the first stop
was Salt Lake City. The historian and the Carnival King took in $200, but were
then ordered to leave town.
"There has been a complaint against you," said the policeman. "The principal of
the high school charges that you are teaching false history."
Business was good at Big Spring, Texas, until the local authorities seized them.
They were tried by the justice of the peace in the back room of his bakery and
fined fifty dollars for transporting a corpse without a license. In order to avert
trouble of this kind, they went to the state capitol at Austin and showed their
traveling companion to the chief health officer of the state.
"This is not a corpse but a mummy," said the health official. "If you get into any
more trouble of this kind, refer the local people to me."
Barnstorming With John
While at Austin, Mr. Wilkerson took the precaution of incorporating. He
obtained, for a fee of ten dollars, a charter for the American Historical Research
Society. This is an imposing document with the Lone Star seal on it, and it has
saved the operators of the mummy from trouble on innumerable occasions. John
now travels in a truck with THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL RESEARCH
SOCIETY painted on the front of it. The attraction is advertised by handbills, the
first words of which are: THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL RESEARCH
SOCIETY PRESENTS--JOHN WILKES BOOTH.
For a while Wilkerson and his partner operated successfully at Odessa, Texas,
where there had just been an oil strike. Everybody wanted to spend money, and
they threw silver dollars into the collection plate. John was hitting upwards of
twenty-five dollars an hour when a woman spectator said to Wilkerson:
"If you want to know about Booth's life after the assassination, you ought to go
and see Judge G.M. Schenck, of Lubbock. He knows all about it."
In spite of the rain of money, Wilkerson stopped the show at once and started on
the long trip to Lubbock, Texas, where he found Circuit Judge Schenck. The
judge told of meeting a stranger at breakfast in Guthrie, Oklahoma, in 1901. They
got into conversation and the judge stated that he hailed from Meridian, Texas.
"Why, that John Wilkes Booth's old hiding place," said the stranger, who then
started to tell of the ramblings of Booth after the assassination. The judge was
held spellbound and spent most of the day and night with his new friend, who
was full of sensational details of Booth's escape in 1865 and his meanderings in
the Southwest. From the description of the man, Mr. Wilkerson concluded that
the judge was hearing the tale from the lips of Booth himself. The story cleared
up many points that had puzzled Wilkerson, but particularly the matter of certain
tattoo marks missing on John. Before the assassination, Wilkes had the initials
"J.W.B." tattooed on his right hand. They are not found on the mummy. The
stranger who talked to Judge Schenck said that Booth had had the initials
removed by a friendly tattoo remover in New Orleans.
A Texas Tradition
Wilkerson made almost a house-to-house canvass in Glen Rose, Iredell,
Granbury and other towns in Texas where the alleged Booth had been known as
John St. Helen. From scores of people Wilkerson obtained descriptions of St.
Helen which seemed to fit Booth. Everybody was particularly emphatic about St.
Helen's elegance of dress and courtliness of manners. St. Helen ran two saloons at
Granbury - the Blackhawk and the Lady Gay. Wilkerson found old patrons who
testified that drinking men went to those saloons as to a school of etiquette and
learned the ways of high society merely by observing St. Helen. One of
Wilkerson's witnesses was Ashley W. Crockett, a grandson of Davy Crockett.
Ashley, a Texas journalist for more than half a century, was a cub reporter of the
Granbury Vidette in the early 70's. He recalled how St. Helen came in to the
Vidette office one day with a tray covered with choice liquors, bowed in his most
distinguished manner and said, "A treat for the office force," then withdrew
elegantly before anybody could thank him. Many old-timers recalled John St.
Helen as the man who introduced backgammon into that part of the world.
Wilkerson has found nothing in the literature to show that John Wilkes Booth
played backgammon in this country before 1865. His conjecture is that the
assassin picked it up in England, where he is believed to have spent some years
between 1865 and 1870. At Granbury, Wilkerson found Mrs. Eula Carter, who
said that her late husband knew St. Helen to be Booth.
St. Helen's earliest known appearance in Texas was at Iredell, in Bosque County,
where he taught school. At that time he boarded with a man named Green
Williams. Wilkerson here found, to his dismay, that St. Helen had confessed, not
that he was Booth but that he was a son of Marshal Ney, who, according to some
authorities, escaped after Waterloo and settled in the United States. St. Helen went
so far as to tell some of his Iredell friends that he had called himself St. Helen
after the island of St. Helen and did this as a tribute to Napolean - the least that a
son of Marshal Ney could do to honor his old commander. This complicated
matters and puzzled Wilkerson for some time. His conclusion, however, was that
the stranger obviously had a past, and told the Ney story in order to parry the
suspicion that he might be Booth.
Another awkward episode occurred in Texas. The technique of operating the
mummy was a delicate one. If an admission charge was made, it was necessary to
take out a local theatrical license. The license fee was prohibitive, in view of
John's low average earning power. Therefore, admission was free. But, as the
spectator filed out of the exhibition truck, gentle pressure was put on him to
contribute toward paying the expense of the culture-spreading institution. A plate
was conspicuously exhibited with a few quarters and half dollars in it. Dimes,
nickels or pennies that got into the plate were deftly removed to avert their
unfavorable psychological effect. Wilkerson had made an admirable rule to the
effect that the contributions of children should be graciously returned. But
Wilkerson was absent for a time while John was playing in Temple, Texas. The
Carnival King, who had never approved of the practice of depriving minors of
the right to contribute, high-pressured a lot of school children for small change.
Local indignation developed, and the entire American Historical Research Society
was run out of town by the police.
The Trail of an Assassin
During his long search for evidence, Wilkerson uncovered five living John
Wilkes Booths, four of whom were related to the assassin of Lincoln. All had
changed their names. By personal interviews and by correspondence, he made
contact with many other relatives of Booth. From many of these he obtained
accounts of meetings with John Wilkes Booth long after the assassination.
Blanche Booth, a niece of John Wilkes Booth, was in El Reno, Oklahoma, with a
touring company in December, 1902. She made an affidavit that a man called at
her lodgings, gave her a card and said, "Blanche, wouldn't you like to see
Johnny?" She slammed the door in his face, regarding him as a stage-door
Johnny, but when she looked at the card, she found the name "John Wilkes
Booth" in what seemed to be her uncle's handwriting. Wilkerson's researches
indicate that Booth - then using the name David E. George - went to Enid
immediately thereafter, stayed drunk for three weeks and then committed suicide.
The historian conjectures that the rebuff from his niece broke Booth's heart.
During his travels in connection with the Booth saga, Wilkerson stumbled on to
some interesting historical material in Beloit, Wisconsin. In April, 1898, American
newspapers had carried reports that John Wilkes Booth had been seen in Brazil.
This report stimulated Booth history or myth all over the country. Walter Hubbell,
an actor, carried the news to Dr. Joseph Booth, a brother of John Wilkes Booth;
according to Hubbell, Joseph exclaimed, "South America! Why, the last we heard
of him he was in Oklahoma." In Beloit the Brazil report brought two witnesses to
light who testified that Booth had made his escape