Editing John Wilkes Booth (section)

==Background and early life==
Booth's parents were noted British [[Shakespeare in performance|Shakespearean]] actor [[Junius Brutus Booth]] and his mistress, Mary Ann Holmes, who moved to the United States from England in June 1821.<ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=Gene |title=American Gothic: the story of America's legendary theatrical family, Junius, Edwin, and John Wilkes Booth |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |location=New York |year=1992 |isbn=0-671-76713-5 |page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780671767136/page/23 23] |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780671767136/page/23}}</ref> They purchased a {{convert|150|acre|0|adj=on}} farm near [[Bel Air, Maryland]], where John Wilkes Booth was born in a four-room log house on May 10, 1838, the ninth of ten children.<ref>{{cite book |first=Michael W. |last=Kauffman |title=American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies |publisher=[[Random House]] |location=New York City |year=2004 |isbn=0-375-50785-X |pages=81–82}}</ref> He was named after English [[Radicalism (historical)|radical]] politician [[John Wilkes]], a distant relative.<ref>Smith, p. 18.</ref><ref>Booth's uncle Algernon Sydney Booth was an ancestor of [[Cherie Blair]] (née Booth), wife of former British Prime Minister [[Tony Blair]].{{spaces|2}}–{{spaces|2}}{{cite web |last=Westwood |first=Philip |year=2002 |title=The Lincoln-Blair Affair |url=http://www.genealogytoday.com/uk/columns/westwood/021025.html |access-date=February 2, 2009 |publisher=[[Genealogy Today]] |archive-date=December 10, 2012 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20121210212040/http://www.genealogytoday.com/uk/columns/westwood/021025.html |url-status=live}}{{spaces|2}}–{{spaces|2}}{{cite news |last=Coates |first=Bill |date=August 22, 2006 |title=Tony Blair and John Wilkes Booth |newspaper=[[Madera Tribune]] |url=http://www.maderatribune.com/life/lifeview.asp?c=193252 |url-status=dead |access-date=February 2, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080918092102/http://www.maderatribune.com/life/lifeview.asp?c=193252 |archive-date=September 18, 2008}}</ref> Thirty years after he had absconded across the Atlantic Ocean, Junius' wife Adelaide Delannoy Booth was granted a divorce in 1851 on grounds of adultery, and Holmes legally wed Junius on May 10, 1851, John Wilkes' 13th birthday.<ref>Smith, pp. 43–44.</ref> Nora Titone suggests in her book ''My Thoughts Be Bloody'' (2010) that the shame and ambition of Junius Brutus Booth's actor sons [[Edwin Booth|Edwin]] and John Wilkes eventually spurred them to strive for achievement and acclaim as rivals—Edwin as a [[Unionist (United States)|Unionist]] and John Wilkes as the assassin of [[Abraham Lincoln]].<ref name="Titone2010">{{cite book |first=Nora |last=Titone |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vBSQUOMDMLEC |title=My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy |publisher=[[Simon and Schuster]] |location=New York City |date=2010 |isbn=978-1-4165-8605-0}}</ref>

Booth's father built [[Tudor Hall (Bel Air, Maryland)|Tudor Hall]] on the Harford County property as the family's summer home in 1851, while also maintaining a winter residence on Exeter Street in Baltimore.<ref>{{cite book |first=Stanley |last=Kimmel |title=The Mad Booths of Maryland |publisher=[[Dover Books]] |location=New York City |year=1969 |page=68 |lccn=69019162}}</ref><ref name="McCardell1931">{{cite news |first=Lee |last=McCardell |title=The body in John Wilkes Booth's grave |newspaper=[[The Baltimore Sun]] |publisher=[[Tronc]] |location=Baltimore, MD |date=December 27, 1931}}</ref><ref>John Wilkes Booth's boyhood home of Tudor Hall still stands on [[Maryland Route 22]] near Bel Air. It was acquired by Harford County in 2006 to be eventually opened to the public as a historic site and museum.</ref><ref>{{cite news |first=Michael E. |last=Ruane |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/409061305/997B06B64BEA4FF8PQ |title=Birthplace of Infamy |newspaper=[[Washington Post]] |publisher=Nash |location=Washington, D.C. |date=February 4, 2001 |access-date=September 29, 2018 |url-access=subscription |id={{ProQuest|409061305}} |page=F1}}</ref> The Booth family was listed as living in Baltimore in the 1850 census.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://ghostsofbaltimore.org/2013/09/12/john-wilkes-booths-family-north-exeter-street/ |title=John Wilkes Booth's Family on North Exeter Street |last=Tom |date=September 12, 2013 |website=Ghosts of Baltimore |access-date=February 17, 2019 |archive-date=February 18, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190218021240/https://ghostsofbaltimore.org/2013/09/12/john-wilkes-booths-family-north-exeter-street/ |url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Tudor Hall.jpg|thumb|left|Tudor Hall in 1865]]
As a boy, Booth was athletic and popular, and he became skilled at horsemanship and fencing.<ref>{{cite book |first=George Alfred |last=Townsend |author-link=George Alfred Townsend |title=The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth |publisher=[[Dick and Fitzgerald]] |location=New York |orig-year=1865 |year=1977 |url=https://archive.org/details/lifecrimecapture01town |isbn=978-0-9764805-3-2 |page=[https://archive.org/details/lifecrimecapture01town/page/20 20]}}</ref> He attended the [[Bel Air High School (Bel Air, Maryland)#History|Bel Air Academy]] and was an indifferent student whom the headmaster thought was "not deficient in intelligence, but disinclined to take advantage of the educational opportunities offered him."<ref>Kimmel, p. 70.</ref> In 1850–1851, he attended the [[Quaker]]-run Milton Boarding School for Boys located in [[Sparks, Maryland]], and later [[St. Timothy's Hall]], an [[Episcopal Church of the United States|Episcopal]] military academy in [[Catonsville, Maryland]] where he was baptized by Reverend [[Libertus Van Bokkelen]].<ref>Clarke, pp. 39–40.</ref> At the Milton school, students recited classical works by such authors as [[Cicero]], [[Herodotus]], and [[Tacitus]].<ref name="Kauffman2004 pp87–91">{{cite book |first=Michael W. |last=Kauffman |title=American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies |publisher=[[Random House]] |location=New York City |isbn=0-375-50785-X |pages=87–91 |year=2004}}</ref> Students at [[St. Timothy's Hall]] wore military uniforms and were subject to a regimen of daily formation drills and strict discipline.<ref name="Kauffman2004 pp87–91"/> Booth left school at 14 after his father's death.<ref>{{cite book |first=Thomas |last=Goodrich |title=The Darkest Dawn |url=https://archive.org/details/darkestdawnlinco00good_705 |url-access=limited |publisher=[[Indiana University]] |location=Bloomington |year=2005 |isbn=0-253-32599-4 |page=[https://archive.org/details/darkestdawnlinco00good_705/page/n220 210]}}</ref>

While attending the Milton Boarding School, Booth met a [[Romani people|Romani]] [[fortune-teller]] who read his palm and pronounced a grim destiny, telling him that he would have a grand but short life, doomed to die young and "meeting a bad end".<ref name="Clarke1996 pp43–45">Clarke, pp. 43–45.</ref> His sister recalled that he wrote down the palm-reader's prediction, showed it to his family and others, and often discussed its portents in moments of melancholy.<ref name="Clarke1996 pp43–45" /><ref name="Goodrich2005 p211">Goodrich, p. 211.</ref>

By age 16, Booth was interested in the theater and in politics, and he became a delegate from Bel Air to a rally by the [[Know Nothing]] Party for [[Henry Winter Davis]], the anti-immigrant party's candidate for Congress in the 1854 elections.<ref>Smith, p. 60.</ref> Booth aspired to follow in the footsteps of his father and his actor brothers [[Edwin Booth|Edwin]] and [[Junius Brutus Booth Jr.|Junius Brutus Jr.]] He began practicing [[elocution]] daily in the woods around Tudor Hall and studying Shakespeare.<ref>Smith, p. 49.</ref>