John Wilkes Booth is born, May 10, 1838
Booth was one of eight children born to his flamboyant actor father, Junius Brutus Booth, a rogue if ever there was one. He abandoned his first wife and two children in England and fled to America with an eighteen-year-old London girl, who became John Wilkes’s mother. The young Booth was often lost in the confusion of the chaotic household. He nurtures a deep hatred for his father and the nation’s father figure, Abraham Lincoln. Booth was jealous of his father, an accomplished actor who never acknowledged his son’s talent. Booth’s paternal loathing was transferred to the president.