John Wilkes Booth John Wilkes Booth, circa 1862 John Wilkes
Booth (May 10, 1838 - April 26, 1865) was an American actor who
is most famous for being the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. A
professional and extremely popular stage actor of his day, Booth
was a Confederate sympathizer who was dissatisfied by the
outcome of the American Civil War. John Wilkes Booth was born on
May 10, 1838, on a farm near Bel Air, Maryland. His parents,
Junius Booth and Mary Ann Holmes, were British and had moved to
the United States in 1821. Junius was one of the most famous
actors on the American stage; after he died in 1852 the poet
Walt Whitman wrote, "There went the greatest and by far the most
noble Roman of them all." J. Wilkes Booth (as he was known
professionally) made his stage debut at the age of 17 (in August
1855) when he played the Earl of Richmond in Shakespeare's
Richard III. In 1858 he became a member of the Richmond Theatre,
and his career started to take off. He was referred to in
reviews as "the handsomest man in