Grandpa swears this is a true story. Did John Wilkes Booth really live in Texas in the late 1880's or 1890's? Grandpa remembers what he looked like. Lots of stories have come up through the last 100 years or more, about John Wilkes Booth not really dying in a fire, after he shot Lincoln. Is it true ? Grandpa swears this is true .
John Wilkes Booth in Texas?
The town was Lexington, Texas. Did John Wilkes Booth really live there for awhile, many years after he was supposed to have died in that fire, after killing Abraham Lincoln? My Aunt Clare related this story to me a few years ago. It is very interesting. Her father, Earl Goode (my grandfather) was still alive when John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. As he sat before the TV watching the story unfold, telling about people who had assassinated presidents, the TV screen changed to show pictures of John Wilkes Booth.
My grandfather’s eyes got big and he leaned forward in his chair and exclaimed, “My God, that looks like old Dr. Kapuh. That sure is Dr. Kapuh!”
Aunt Sallie, his daughter, asked, “Who in the world is Dr. Kapuh?”
Grandpa said, “Old Dr. Kapuh was the name of this man who came to Lee County back when I was a young kid (grandpa was born in 1883). He said he was a well digger and a doctor too. He lived way out in the country in an old shack.”
“And there was this woman who lived with him and always came into Lexington (in Lee County) to get her mail at the post office and she would get his too. Everyone always called her Old Lady Serratt, except they pronounced it Sheerat!”
Clare went on with her story, “Daddy told Sallie that one day Old Lady Serratt didn’t come in to get her mail. Days went by and she never came back. And no one had seen or heard from Old Dr. Kapuh. Well, a bunch of men went out to his shack and found him dead. The old lady was nowhere to be found. And then he said,
“I saw the man and he sure looks like that picture of Booth!”
First of all, many historians allege that John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, was killed in Garrett's barn on April 26, 1865. Because there was so much mystery surrounding the autopsy and burial of Booth, some held the belief that Booth didn't really die that night. Some claimed that Booth had actually escaped and that the man shot in the barn wasn't really Booth.
Many people claim he went to Texas. There is a museum in Granbury where Booth was supposed to have worked as a bartender. He was also supposed to show up in Oklahoma.
One interesting thing I found while researching Lincoln’s assassination on the Internet was this: There was a woman named Mary Surratt who was arrested in the conspiracy to kill President Lincoln. She was convicted and hanged for the crime in 1865. Could “Old Lady Seratt” be Mary Surratt?
As I thought about my aunt’s story about the rumor of John Wilkes Booth being alive after having supposedly been dead for years, I checked out more stories on the Internet. I was amazed at how many places claim that John Wilkes Booth was hiding out there after having died in the fire. .
Then in more research, I discovered John Wilkes Booth had a cousin named Quint Booth. His parents and his siblings moved to Texas in 1858. He lived in San Antonio after the Civil War. From there he moved to Comanche County and then to Eastland County, Texas.
At Age 59 he lived in Abilene, Texas. On Aug. 19, 1899 he listed his occupation as a farmer. He died in 1908 in Eastland County Texas, at the age of 69 and was buried in Eastland County.
Elbert Booth, Quint’s son, stated that his father told him that his father was a cousin of John Wilkes Booth. A granddaughter of a sister of Quint Booth said that her grandmother told her that her brother Quint had visited with John Wilkes Booth near San Antonio many years after Booth was reportedly killed in Virginia. Many members of that family have told the same story. Stories about Booth have been passed on through generations. So maybe he really was in South and Central Texas.
So, who knows, maybe “Old Man Kapuh” was really John Wilkes Booth. Lots of documentation seems to put him in Texas during those years my grandfather talks about. Also, could “Old Lady Serratt or “Sheeratt” have been Mary Surratt? Maybe she wasn’t really hanged that day! Maybe she and Booth ran away together to Texas! My grandfather said he had never thought about Old Man Kaput being John Wilkes Booth until that day he saw his picture so big on the TV. It’s a mystery!
But maybe it is like the story of Billy the Kid, or Elvis, whose post death stories run abound. Somehow we keep those memories alive through generations of story telling.
I think I will go back to Lexington and Lee County where many of my ancestors are buried, and look for Old Doctor Kapuh”s grave.
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