Legend says John Wilkes Booth escaped to Oklahoma, lived into his 60s in Enid - Enid, OK - News Article Locations on Waymarking.com

The Grand Avenue Hotel (now the Garfield Furniture Story) is the location of this news story about John Wilkes Booth.

Article text:

More than 150 years ago, the actor John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, shooting him just days after the Confederacy surrendered in the Civil War.

History then tell us that Booth was tracked down and killed after he tried to escape. Some however, believe the last part of Booth's story is not true.

In Enid, there's a legend that Booth spent his final days in Oklahoma and lived into his 60s.

"He was in Enid a little under two years," Russ Frazee told KOCO 5. "Moved into what was the relatively new Grand Avenue Hotel."

The hotel, which is now the Garfield Furniture Store, is the setting for quite a story.

"That used to be an old hotel. Some people think John Wilkes Booth died there," Frazee said.

Legend has it that a bed still at the now-furniture store was where Booth died, decades after assassinating the United States' 16th president.

"Came back to his room and administered the strychnine to himself on his bed," Frazee said.

According to Frazee, other hotel guests could hear Booth struggling to breathe.

"The growls and gurgles of this horrible death by poison," Frazee said.

But how did one of the most infamous people in American history get to Enid? The story starts in 1865, right after Booth killed Lincoln.

"Shot Lincoln, jumped on the stage and stated, 'Death to tyrants,'" Frazee said.

Historians say Booth left Washington, D.C., and Union soldiers found him 12 days later at a barn in Virginia. They shot and killed Booth, and the barn caught fire.

"The body was taken out of the barn ... slightly roasted," Frazee said. "At the autopsy, there was doubt that the man was actually Booth. They killed the wrong man, or Booth got away."

So where did Booth go?

"We believe Booth got on the Appalachian Trail and went to the Gulf of Mexico," Frazee said.

The legend is that Booth then made his way through Texas and into Oklahoma.

"Changed his alias to David E. George," Frazee said. "He went up through the Chisholm Trail, which is our 81 Highway here up to Hennessey."

The tale goes that once he got to Hennessey, Oklahoma, Booth got really sick.

"On what he thought was his deathbed, he confessed to his landlord, a Methodist minister and his wife that he was actually Booth," Frazee said.

But Booth recovered, and some locals believed he left Hennessey and fled to Enid because he had spilled his secret.

"He would go to the saloons, located on the south side of the square, where we are, and recite Shakespeare and do skits," Frazee said.

Those skits are a possible clue that Booth was who he confessed to be. Booth was one of the most famous actors in the country at the time he killed Lincoln and was a big fan of Shakespeare.

"In an alcohol stupor, he was claiming to his fellow barflies, 'You'll see. I was once an important man and did a great thing,'" Frazee told KOCO 5.

As he aged, Booth became unhappy and despondent, and poisoned himself in the hotel room. The autopsy revealed more clues about the man.

"Had the broken leg. Was the correct age. The correct physical characteristics," Frazee said. "The one telling mark that their Booth didn't have but our Booth does: A scar across the back of the neck that Booth had gotten on stage during a sword fight."

Whether this person was actually John Wilkes Booth, the mortician capitalized on the possibility.

"He put it in the back of a funeral parlor and, for a nickel, you could go in and see the body of John Wilkes Booth," Frazee said.

The body was embalmed with arsenic -- essentially mummified. The mortician eventually sold the Booth mummy to the circus.

"As part of the circus thrill was the freak show," Frazee said. "Two-headed cow. Three-legged chicken and so forth."

Because the circus has trade journals at the time, the Enid group was able to track the so-called Booth mummy until the 1940s, when it disappeared and vanished from records. Now, the only thing left of the Enid-Booth legend is the hotel room.

People travel from all over to see the room where Booth allegedly died.

"We've had Japan, the Netherlands, England, Germany," Frazee said.

They're still holding out hope for any information. They want to find the Booth mummy to examine its DNA.

Type of publication: Television When was the article reported?: 08/21/2019 Publication: KOCO News 5 Article Url: [Web Link] Is Registration Required?: no How widespread was the article reported?: local News Category: Crime

Visit Instructions:
Give the date of your visit at the news location along with a description of what you learned or experienced.

Recent Visits/Logs:

There are no logs for this waymark yet.