Izola Martha Mills

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At the Globe theatre with the Boston Comic Opera Company is an actress whose name and family connection impart a great degree of interest in the general public. Her maiden name was Rita Booth but she is now the wife of Mr. Henderson, the director of the company. And in every issue of the Binghamton Herald Republican during this period when the Floy Crowell troupe was in town, often only inches away from the show’s advert about their Opera House appearances, and including the issue that announced her death…there was also this advertisement for the cemetery that soon received her corpse. I have spent a lot of time on looking at Binghamton microfilm papers and I am not familiar with any other period in which the Glenwood Cemetery advertised so blatantly, expensively, or at all. The photo below is of an advert that was running daily during this period. This is shown at the end of the Rita Booth portion of this essay, but, those who intend to continue on to the coming information about the digging up of 1,330 bodies and their trek through town, should take note of the name HULBERT at the bottom of the advert. That is Hulbert SENIOR,..and we will meet his son at an elderly age when we take the bright lights off Miss Booth, and return to discussing both the missing and existing cemetery. Keep in mind that the Binghamton papers are unindexed in the library: hence the disconnection in finding new (old) materials.)

April 15th is the 149th anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. So it seems appropriate to write about Martha Lizola Mills again. I believe I could write about her for years to come. She, her daughter Ogarita Elizabeth Bellows, and her granddaughter, Izola Louise Hills, all believed Martha Lizola was the secret wife of John Wilkes Booth. They also believed Booth escaped and lived several more years and that he fathered a son with Martha Lizola after Lincoln's assassination. John [Wilkes Booth] had one daughter Ogretia and one son Alonso. Ogretia was beautyfull. Alonso was very much like the old Mr Richard Booth. Johns wife is still living. her name was Izalia. I do not know her maiden name. John told Roslie he would give her two oil wells, and he wished her to take care of those two children, which she did, although they were with there Mother. Rosie calls them her Children. John was not married to there Mother. after Johns Death Izalia she went with the Children A way to the Ilenoiise. they the Children are both married now. poor Children… None of the family takes any account of John Wilks’ Children but Roslie. she is very kind to them: does not visit them, but sends them money every spring and fall. calls them her Children.” Edwin Booth made his return to the Booth family farm in 1856 after an absence of four years. During this time he had made a name and, more importantly, a fortune for himself by acting in California. He had also toured Australia and played before King Kamehameha IV in Hawaii. When Edwin witnessed the poverty that his family was living in on the farm, he whisked them away and put them up in a home in Baltimore. The family would never live at Tudor Hall again.

About Me

Everywhere I went, danger seemed to follow me. Don’t get me wrong; people weren’t trying to hurt me. I never gave anyone a reason to dislike me. But I needed to keep some things about me hidden. If people knew the truth, I would have been sent to prison. And in any case ‘Booth’s’ body was kept under close guard on the Montauk on the Potomac in Washington by the authorites, before being buried in total secrecy in the Old Arsenal nearby.

Draft copy of “John Wilkes Booth’s Enigmatic Brother Joseph” by John C. Brennan provided by Art Loux. She gave birth to Izola Forrester in 1878 but was not married to the father. The following year, she married 64-year-old mill owner William Ross Wilson. They lived in Burrillville, Rhode Island, but Henderson eventually returned to theater life, causing Wilson in to file a divorce petition in 1882 on the grounds that she was a member of the Theatre Comique in Providence. According to her husband, it was a "disreputable place". [3] And come on- the most handsome man in America with gold teeth at 27 and in the flower of his youth ?Izola lived until 1887. The proceeds from Booth’s will were not distributed until 1896. Both she and Booth’s daughter, Ogarita were dead by that time and didn’t inherit any of Booth’s money. In January of 1884, Mary Ann Booth fell at her and Rose’s shared home in New York. The accident resulted in a broken hip, the effects of which she would never recover. It is true that John Wilkes Booth was not shot and killed in Garrett’s Barn in Caroline County, Virginia. The man killed in the barn was an unknown Confederate soldier, shot and killed by Sergeant Boston Corbett under direct instructions from the NDP under Colonel Baker and Officer Conger (later promoted to Lt. Colonel for delivering the soldier’s out of date diary (1864) to Baker in Washington).

However you are correct, my statements are presented as one would in any discussion. You would have to read the book ‘Our American Hero’ to find all the proofs you need , if you had a mind to. Abram felt guilty about bringing this disgrace to my mother. He believed he could set things straight by marrying her and giving us his name. He asked Izola to marry him, and she answered with an enthusiastic, Yes. Only a handful of known documents exist that prove a relationship existed between Rose and the con-artist Izola Mills. The most open and honest account of their relationship comes from a letter written by Mrs. Elijah Rogers. Mrs. Rogers was a neighbor of the Booths when they lived on their farm near Bel Air and is mentioned in a couple of Asia’s “Tudor Hall” letters. Mrs. Rogers apparently kept in touch with the Booths, to some extent, after they moved from Tudor Hall. In 1886, a Baltimore doctor by the name of William Stump Forwood was working on a biography of Junius Brutus Booth, the elder. He wrote to Mrs. Rogers, asking her about the life of the Booth family in Bel Air. She, in return wrote him six letters of her reminiscences. While her memories must be taken with a grain of salt, in a letter Mrs. Rogers wrote on August 16 th, she mentions quite openly Izola and her children: After she married Abram, mother and I had a new name. Mother became Izola Mills, and I became Martha Lizola Mills. Mother was relieved and believed we were now respectable, but the church and my mother’s neighbors could not forgive her for giving birth to me. The remains of Miss Rosalie Ann Booth, daughter of Junius Brutus Booth, and a sister of Edwin Booth, who died in New York on last Tuesday, were quietly interred at noon yesterday in the family lot at Greenmount Cemetery. Only the immediate friends of the family, a few personal friends, and about forty outsiders witnessed the interment. Mr. Edwin Booth had made a special request that the funeral should be as quiet as possible.You said, “She claimed she married Stevenson, a friend of Booth's so she could travel to California and meet Booth while he was in hiding before leaving the country. It was during that meeting that Harry Jerome was conceived.” John was a matinee idol. Women adored him. After our marriage, he wanted women to continue thinking of him as an eligible bachelor. He told no one about our marriage. Women kept dreaming he would be their lover. Perhaps you will think now I am obssessed with John Booth but I will also say that if you are a descendant then surely you would not be dis-interested in knowing that others do not see Booth as an evil assassin.