Booth Family

Sandwiched in the drywall of a farmhouse and caught between historical preservation and commercial development is a log cabin no one can see. Yet its murky historical background has created a bit of controversy. Since the 1800s, the log cabin has been a point of county pride and infamy: It was once home to great American actors Junius Brutus and Edwin Booth, as well as assassin John Wilkes Booth. Or so area residents believed, until a historical architect and a historical writer questioned its origin.

PERHAPS fate or poetic justice decreed that a young couple would outbid more organized suitors for Tudor Hall, the home near Bel Air that once belonged to the Booth family.The nearby community college wanted it. Actors Stacy Keach and Hal Holbrook lent support to the college because several members of the Booth family were renowned Shakespearean actors in the 19th century. Historians also have great interest in the property because one of Junius Brutus and Mary Ann Booth's 10 children was John Wilkes, who killed President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

The bell rang at the state's unclaimed property booth at the Maryland State Fair yesterday as Jeff Sweren of Columbia found money belonging to a member of his family."

Maryland forward Keith Booth was found in violation of an NCAA bylaw for the purchase of a ticket to a Chicago Bulls playoff game last spring, but will miss no games, the university announced last night.A release issued by Maryland's legal department said Booth will be required to donate $50, the face value of the ticket, to the charity of his choice. The release said he did not lose his eligibility because he was unaware -- and had no way of knowing -- that the ticket had been purchased by a family friend through a sports agent, a violation of bylaw 12.3.

On a bare stage with the simplest of lighting, a group of five actors gave life and breath last week to the Booths, one of Harford County's most memorable families.Their performance, titled "What Dreams May Come . . ." and featuring British actress Lynn Redgrave, was the culmination of a day celebrating the life and work of the Booth family -- one of America's theatrical dynasties. It also helped raise funds to preserve Tudor Hall, their former home.Opening with an antique recording of Edwin Booth reading "Othello," the play interwove the story of the Booth family with some of Shakespeare's classics.

Actor Gary Sloan can think of only three families who qualify as acting dynasties: the Booths, the Barrymores and the Redgraves.So he suggests it's more than merely notable that Lynn Redgrave is coming to Maryland this weekend to support efforts to restore Tudor Hall, the Harford County home of Junius Brutus Booth, patriarch of classical acting in America.Was it, perhaps, pre-ordained?After all, when Ms. Redgrave stepped inside the front door of Tudor Hall for the first time in April, she said, "I'm home," Dorothy Fox says.

Actress Lynn Redgrave will come to Tudor Hall in Bel Air on Saturday to participate in a conference examining the evolution of Shakespearean productions in the United States since the time of the Booth family.The Preservation Association for Tudor Hall (PATH) will conduct the conference, "The Discovered Country: America and the Classical Acting Tradition," beginning at noon at Tudor Hall, the homestead of the Booths, a theatrical family.Junius Brutus Booth, an English-born Shakespearean actor, settled in Harford County in 1822.

John Wilkes Booth will continue to rest in peace -- wherever he is.Baltimore Circuit Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan yesterday denied a petition by two Booth family members for exhumation of the remains in a Baltimore cemetery.The aim was to resolve a century of questions about whether Abraham Lincoln's assassin really was cornered and shot by federal troops in 1865, as the history books say, and later interred in the Booth family plot in Green Mount Cemetery.The decision was a defeat for Nathaniel Orlowek and Arthur Ben Chitty, researchers and conspiracy buffs who say Booth escaped, forcing the government to cover up by burying someone else in his place.

For 130 years, a cloud of controversy has surrounded John Wilkes Booth's escape from Washington after he assassinated President Lincoln.Mainstream history texts say John Wilkes Booth was shot to death after Army troops cornered him on a Virginia farm. Booth's body was buried first in a Washington prison cell, moved to another site in the prison, then reburied in the family plot in Baltimore.But some of Booth's relatives tell another tale. They say he escaped to Enid, in what was the Oklahoma Territory, where he lived under the alias of David E. George until he committed suicide in 1903.

John Wilkes Booth hid from federal troops for 12 days after he shot President Abraham Lincoln.And Green Mount Cemetery officials in Baltimore say Mr. Booth has been hiding from them for most of the 126 years that have passed since he was buried in the family plot."