Lincoln’s Assassin Practiced the Shooting in Massachusetts

So many events in American history have Massachusetts ties. If you are willing to dig, you can usually find a link.

Take, for example, the assassination of the nation's 16th president, Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln, born in Kentucky, was shot at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. on April 15, 1865, and died of his injuries the following day at the Peterson House, also in Washington.

Lincoln visited Massachusetts. In September 1848, while still a young Congressman, Abe Lincoln visited New Bedford and spent a night at the home of his friend Joseph Grinnell at 739 County Street.

Get our free mobile app

Stage actor John Wilkes Booth killed President Lincoln. Booth was born in Bel Air, Maryland.

Fifty Plus Advocate says Booth, "an advocate of slavery," was "obsessed with the South's worsening condition in the Civil War." Booth was certainly unhappy with Lincoln's re-election.

The site says, "In 1862, he (Booth) made his Boston debut playing nightly at the Boston Museum, and the Boston Transcript once wrote a review calling him 'the most promising young actor on the American stage."

John Wilkes Booth reportedly owned property on Commonwealth Avenue. His brother Edwin was a resident of Boston.

In July 1864, Booth and several co-conspirators reportedly met at Boston's Omni Parker House Hotel to hatch a plan to kidnap and kill Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward.

Boston Ghosts says nearly a week before Lincoln's assassination almost a year later, "Some witnesses have recalled seeing John Wilkes Booth taking practice shots at a nearby shooting range located a block from the hotel."

Fifty Plus Advocate reports, "Booth returned to Boston on April 5, 1865, where he was seen at a firing range, presumably Roland Edward's Pistol Gallery on Green Street, practicing shooting his pistol just 10 days before assassinating Lincoln."

Booth was killed on April 26, 1865, while hiding in a barn in Port Royale, Virginia. He was shot by a soldier named Thomas "Boston" Corbett who was born in England, not Massachusetts.