Booth family

The patriarch, Junius Brutus Booth, was a London-born lawyer's son who eventually became an actor after he attended a production of Othello at the Covent Garden theatre.

He performed roles in several small theaters throughout England and joined a tour of the Low Countries in 1814, returning the following year to make his London debut.

Booth abandoned his wife and their young son in 1821 and ran off to the United States with Mary Ann Holmes, a London flower girl.

They settled on some 150 acres in Harford County near Baltimore and started a family; they had 10 children, six of whom survived to adulthood.

[citation needed] Edwin bought an interest in the Winter Garden Theatre at 667 Broadway in New York City with his brother-in-law John Sleeper Clarke.