A Deer For LRA in Reno.....

Okay, one more chapter in the continuing saga of my family history: 

     I think everyone knows that in addition to being an assassin, John Wilkes Booth was an actor and in fact, came from a family of actors who achieved prominence in the theater of the 1800s.  It's no stretch to assume that his family crossed paths with mine, and indeed they did. The elder Booth (Junius Brutus) appeared a number of times with my paternal great-grandfather, E.L. Davenport.    My recently acquired book on my maternal great-grandaddy, McKee Rankin, cites a "pleasant encounter" between McKee and John Wilkes Booth that occurred only two weeks before Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln.  The book quotes McKee as saying "we had quite a chat about mutual friends, the theater and things in general."  Booth told McKee that he had just come from Montreal, Canada, where he had made arrangements to ship a trunk containing his costumes to Havana "upon a little blockade runner".   Well, the "little blockade runner" was wrecked in the Gulf of St. Lawrence "on the very night of Lincoln's assassination" and the trunk, unclaimed, was taken over by the Canadian Admiralty Court and sold for salvage.   

      Ah, but the story doesn't end there.   McKee's brother, George, who was in the Civil Service in Quebec City, bought the trunk for McKee thinking it would be of some future use for him in his theatrical work. and had the trunk shipped to his home in Windsor, Ontario.   McKee, however, wanted nothing to do with Booth's possessions.  He was appalled by the murder, not only because of the reverence in which he held Lincoln but because the acting profession, which was struggling for acceptance in society, bore the guilt.  He boxed up Booth's costumes, concealed the name J. Wilkes Booth, and put it away.  Where we do not know.  

     Now, I'm going to spend a few days re-reading Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County comic strips, the best possible thing to do if one needs cheering up.