John Wilkes Booth CDV

Superior image of J. Wilkes Booth, waist-up view. This image features the classic John Wilkes Booth pose. In near excellent condition.

John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 - April 26, 1865) was an American actor who is most infamous for assassinating Abraham Lincoln. An extremely popular professional stage actor of his day, Booth was a Confederate sympathizer who was dissatisfied by the outcome of the American Civil War.

Booth was born in 1838, on a farm near Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland. His childhood home was called Tudor Hall and was purchased by Junius Brutus Booth in 1822. The house still stands today and is no longer open for visitation after being sold as a private home. His parents, Junius Brutus Booth and Mary Ann Holmes, were British Roman Catholics who had moved to the United States in 1821. He was named after the famous British revolutionary John Wilkes, whom the family claimed as a distant relative. Junius himself was an actor, as were his other sons Edwin Booth and Junius Brutus Booth Jr.

Booth appeared to have led a happy childhood. He received an education in the classics and in particular Shakespeare. In 1851, at age 13, Booth attended St. Timothy's Military Academy in Catonsville, near Baltimore, Maryland. It was there that he met Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlen, both of whom would later become involved in Booth's attempt to kidnap and, later, murder Lincoln.

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