Was Lincoln’s Assassin Ever in Amesbury?

Front and back of a John Wilkes Booth portrait imprinted with the name of Amesbury photographer Howard F. Currier.

Imagine finding an old portrait of Lincoln-assassin John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865) with the name of an Amesbury photographer on the back. That’s what happened to Mike Harrold, a diligent volunteer researcher at the Amesbury Carriage Museum. The discovery started him on a research project to find the connection between Booth and Amesbury.

It turns out that photographer Howard F. Currier (1838-1903) of Amesbury, and other photographers of the time, generated income by producing and selling photographs of celebrities. Currier offered postcard-size portraits (called CDVs or “cartes de visite”) of John Wilkes Booth. Currier probably produced these cards before the Lincoln assassination, when Booth was a well known actor and a celebrity by today’s standards. Biographer Gene Smith said Booth’s “handsome appearance enthralled women,” and Booth appeared in widely advertised stage productions in Boston in 1862 and 1863, before he shot the President in April of 1865.

So did Booth ever visit Currier’s Amesbury photography studio or did Currier travel out of town to photograph Booth? Sorry, no spoilers here. Find out by reading Mike’s report, “Howard F. Currier, An Amesbury Photographer of the Civil War Era.”