In the early to mid 1800’s, the most famous Booth was not John Wilkes. His older brothers June and Edwin, and their father Junius before them, were well-known in the theatrical world. Since most of the family members are either anti-secession or apolitical, they seem to have been mostly blindsided by John’s actions. I don’t know that anyone has ever really figured out why he did what he did, and this author chose to focus more on the siblings. That gives us an idea of what life in that era might have been like, at least for a family like the Booths.
Much of the story in this fictionalized account of the family is told by Booth siblings Rosalie, Edwin, and Asia. While the Booth family was not an ordinary family, the author does a good job of describing the world they lived in. The Booths were atypical because they were actors, but they were also a rather dysfunctional family, and several had issues with alcohol consumption. They may have traveled more than the average, but mainly the men who were traveling to acting jobs. Edwin and June, in fact, travel to the West Coast to further their careers, and Joe, the youngest, even goes to Australia.
When the children are young, the family lives on a farm in the country, and we learn about the games and pastimes children of that era might have enjoyed. While they never owned slaves, they hired the slaves owned by their neighbors. Later they move to the city of Baltimore, where life is very different. We also learn about the gangs that some of the Booth brothers hung out with, which was definitely a city thing. The siblings reacted differently to the change in surroundings; some preferred farm life, while others enjoyed the busyness of the city.
If this was your family, how would you research them? If you had an ancestor leaving the East coast and arriving by ship to San Francisco after 1848, odds are they travelled to the West Coast via the Panama Canal. Many of the “Miner 49ers” took this route. If you had a thespian in your tree, newspaper research in various cities might turn up performance announcements or reviews. Slave schedules and the census can tell you if your ancestors owned slaves.