Edwin Booth, a famous Shakespearean actor, saved Robert Todd Lincoln from falling off a railway platform in 1869. However, less than a year later, Edwin’s brother, John Wilkes Booth, assassinated Robert’s father, President Abraham Lincoln. Edwin disowned his brother and stopped acting for a few months after the tragedy.
Edwin Booth grew up in an acting family and in the mid-19th century became one of the most famous Shakespearean actors in both the United States and Europe. He was highly regarded for his portrayals of Hamlet and in 1919 he opened Booth’s Theater in Manhattan. One evening in 1869 (although the actual date is unknown), Booth was on a railway platform in Jersey City, New Jersey, along with a sizable group of travelers trying to secure sleeping places for a sleeping car from a driver. Pressed against one of the cars, waiting to purchase a ticket, was a young man later identified as Robert Todd Lincoln. Booth saw Lincoln lose his footing and fall between the car and the platform. Booth grabbed the younger man by the collar of his coat and pulled him to safety, sparing him from potentially serious injury or death. That heroic anecdote would be insignificant historical footnote were it not for the tragic irony of what happened less than a year later. In April 1864, Edwin’s younger brother John Wilkes Booth shot and killed Robert’s father, President Abraham Lincoln, at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.
Two families linked in history:
Edwin Booth didn’t know the name of the man he saved on the rig until years later. Robert Lincoln recalled the incident in a 1909 letter to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine.
Edwin was a supporter of President Lincoln, but his brother John was a staunch secessionist. Lincoln was shot in the head while watching the comedy Our American Cousin.
After the assassination, infamy forced Edwin Booth to curtail his stage work for a few months. He disowned his murderous brother, refusing even to speak his name.
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