BOOTH. BOOTH. 63 purchased the business. He returned to Fitchburg, March, 1885, and has been cashier for J. Cushing & Company to date. " NELSON F. BOND. Major Bond was married in Paxton, September 3, 1S68, to Maria E., daughter of Justus and Sarah E. (Jennison) Shaw. Of this union were three children : Vinnie Arathusa, Frederic Sylvester and Ben- jamin Walter Bond. (The last two de- ceased.) Major Bond has been a member of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States since May 2, 1883. He has served three years on the school board of Fitchburg, and was in 1889 one of the representatives from Fitchburg to the Legislature, serving upon the committee on education. BOOTH, EDWINTHOMAS, son of Junius Brutus and Mary Ann (Holmes) Booth, was born in Bel Air (Harford county) near Baltimore, November 13, 1833. He was named Edwin Thomas as a compliment to his father's friends, Edwin Forrest and Thomas Flynn. He was the seventh of ten children, and became early associated with his father in the vicissitudes of the career of that wonderful and eccentric actor. Most of his boyhood was spent at his father's town residence in Baltimore. Ed- win and his brothers ingeniously trans- formed a spacious arbor, situated upon the grounds, into a theatre, where, assisted by the future comedian and brother-in-law, John S. Clarke, they performed, before select juvenile audiences, classic and roman- tic dramas, with the female element rigor- ously eliminated. On the 10th of September, 1849, Mr. Booth made his first appearance on any stage in the character of "Tressel," in Cibber's version of Richard III. at the Boston Museum, undertaking the part to help out the prompter, to whom: it was usually assigned in connection with his other stage duties. His first appearance on the Philadelphia stage was on May 22, 1850, as "Wilford" in "The Iron Chest." It was in this part, also, that he appeared first in New York City, September 27, 1850, at the National Theatre. At the same theatre, in 185 1, his father being ill, he suddenly and promptly took the place of the elder tragedian, and for the first time in his life enacted Richard III. This effort, remarkably successful for a comparative novice, was hailed as the indication of great talent, and as the augury of a brilliant future. In 1852, ac- companying his father and his elder brother, J. B. Booth, Jr., he crossed the Isthmus and played in a variety of engagements in California. In 1854 he was a member of a dramatic company, including the popu- lar actress, Miss Laura Keene, as leading lady, that took a trip to Australia. Return- ing to California in 1856, he came East, and first appeared at the Front Street Theatre, Baltimore, and then made a tour of all the cities of the South, being everywhere well received. In 1857 he appeared at the Boston Theatre as " Sir Giles Overreach" in a " New Way to Pay Old Debts," and his great success on this occasion, always regarded by him as the turning point in his career, determined him to persist in the resolute endeavor to win the first place as a tragic actor. His life since then has been marked by many vicissi- tudes of personal experience, and by fluctuations of fortune, but it has been one of lofty purpose and continuous advance- ment. On July 7, i860, he married Mary Dev- lin, of Troy, N. Y., who died at Dorchester, Mass., February 21, 1863, leaving a daugh- ter, Edwina. Mr. Booth, subsequently, on the 7th of June, 1869, married Mary Mc- Vicker, the daughter of a Mrs. Runnion, who became the wife of James H. Mc- Yicker of Chicago, a prominent actor ami
