Asia Booth
Encyclopedia
Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland
The town of Bel Air is the county seat of Harford County, Maryland, United States. According to the 2000 census the population of the town was 10,080. In 2009 the town's estimated population was 10,368...
- May 16, 1888 in Bournemouth, England), was the youngest daughter in the family of ten children born to Junius Brutus Booth
Junius Brutus Booth
Junius Brutus Booth was an English actor. He was the father of John Wilkes Booth , Edwin Booth , and Junius Brutus Booth, Jr., an actor and theatre manager...
and his wife Mary Ann Holmes. Her famous brothers were Edwin Booth
Edwin Booth
Edwin Thomas Booth was a famous 19th century American actor who toured throughout America and the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespearean plays. In 1869 he founded Booth's Theatre in New York, a spectacular theatre that was quite modern for its time...
and John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor...
. Asia was named for the continent where her father thought the Garden of Eden had been located.
On April 28, 1859, she married John Sleeper Clarke
John Sleeper Clarke
John Sleeper Clarke , 19th century American comedian and actor, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and was educated for the law. In his boyhood he was a schoolmate of Edwin Booth who was born in the same year as he, and with whom he engaged in amateur dramatic readings as members of the Baltimore...
at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland. The couple had eight children, two of whom, Creston and Wilfred, became actors. Because of the assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
in 1865 by John Wilkes and the effect this had upon the family, she and her husband emigrated to England, where they remained. Asia became the poet and writer in the family, and it is through her work that we are able to gain some insight into the lives of the Booths, particularly John Wilkes. The Unlocked Book, John Wilkes Booth, a Sister's Memoir was written in 1874, but she kept its existence secret, fearing it would upset her husband, who had been imprisoned because of his association with the assassin, and being called to testify at the trials of the co-conspirators. It was not published until 1938 by C.P. Putnam's Sons, when her heirs felt the public would be receptive. Her memoirs were edited and republished in 1996 as John Wilkes Booth: a sister's memoir.
She is buried in the Booth family
Booth family
The Booth family were an English-American theatrical family of the 19th century. It's most famous and well known members were Edwin Booth, one of the leading actors of his day, and John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln....
plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.
Writings of Asia Booth
- The Unlocked Book, John Wilkes Booth, a Sister's Memoir
- Booth, The Elder and the Younger
- Passages, Incidents, and Anecdotes in the Life of Junius Brutus Booth, (The Elder) - Booth Memorials, Carleton, Publisher, New York, 1866