Edwin Booth - Early Life

Early Life

Booth was born near Bel Air, Maryland, into the English American theatrical Booth family. He was the illegitimate son of another famous actor, Junius Brutus Booth, an Englishman, who named Edwin after Edwin Forrest and Thomas Flynn, two of Junius' colleagues. He was the older brother of John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.

Nora Titone, in her book My Thoughts Be Bloody, recounts how the shame and ambition of Junius Brutus Booth's three illegitimate actor sons, Junius Brutus Booth Jr. (who never achieved the stage stardom of his two younger actor brothers), Edwin Booth, and John Wilkes Booth, spurred them to strive, as rivals, for achievement and acclaim—Edwin, a Unionist, and John Wilkes, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.