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215

John Wilkes Booth

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:30,000.00 - 40,000.00 USD
John Wilkes Booth

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Auction Date:2010 Jun 16 @ 10:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:5 Rt 101A Suite 5, Amherst, New Hampshire, 03031, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Bid online at www.rrauction.com. Auction closes June 16.

Extremely rare ALS signed “John W. Booth,” one page, 8.25 x 10, August 8, 1854. Letter, written from Tudor Hall, addressed to “My Dear Fellow” [Samuel William ‘Billy’ O’Laughlen], brother of Michael O’Laughlen, Jr., conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In full: “In these last two weeks, I have had more excitement than I have had for a good while. First, and Foremost, I went to a Champaign [sic] drinking, and you had better believe that the road home seemed longer that night than it ever did before. 2nd we had a client [a sharecropper] on the place whom we could not agree with, we had severfal sprees with him, in one he called my sister a Liar. I knocked him down, which made him bleed like a butcher. We got the Sherrif [sic] to put him off the place, he then warranted me and in a couple of weeks I have to stand trial for assault and battery as you call it. I paid another visit to the Rocks of Deer Creek the other day. It looks just the same and Sunday I whent [sic] to that large camp meeting with the hope of seeing you there, but I was dissipointed [sic]. I saw John Emest there or that fellow that works in your shop. The Indian’s where [sic] up here the other day with their great Bear, excuse my bad writing and excuse me also for not writing to you sooner. Give my respects to all who ask after me. I have nothing more to say.” After his signature Booth adds, “Write soon.” In very good condition, with a couple small separations to intersecting folds, with one fold next to middle initial, light creasing and wrinkling, two punch holes to left edge, reinforcing strip of paper and hole tabs along reverse of left edge, and some scattered light toning and soiling.

The encounter with the sharecropper Booth mentions was likely the same episode his sister recounted in her memoir of the Booth family. After the death of their father, their mother rented the family’s property to an abusive man who insulted Mrs. Booth and her daughters, including calling his sister a liar. Young Booth demanded an apology, but instead broke a stick over the man’s head. “I knocked him down, which made him bleed like a butcher,” Booth boastfully writes. “He then warranted me and in a couple of weeks I have to stand trial for assault.” This letter’s recipient, Billy O’Laughlen, and his brother, Michael O’Laughlen, were boyhood friends of Booth from Baltimore. Booth’s signature is considered of utmost rarity, and his handwritten letters are rarer still, as most people who possessed his papers destroyed them following the Lincoln assassination.
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