Like Father, Like Son

There's nothing like an old mystery solved. For over a century historians have thought that a letter sent in 1835 threatening the life of President Andrew Jackson was either a joke or using someone else's name.

New research concludes that the author of the letter was indeed London-born Shakespearian actor Junius Brutus Booth

And Junius, at the time residing in a hotel in Philadelphia, was the father of another actor: John Wilkes Booth, who would carry out his threat to another president 30 years later.

London-born Junius Brutus Booth was a famous Shakespearean actor and a manic public figure. He had three sons in the theater, including John Wilkes Booth, who later would murder President Lincoln in April 1865 at Ford's Theatre in Washington.

"(Junius) Booth was well-known for acting up, acting out, as well as acting," Feller said.

Most historians believed that someone else wrote the letter and forged Booth's name. Jackson's own clerks filed the letter as "anonymous."

America's seventh president had become accustomed to threats, according to Robert V. Remini, author of the biography "Andrew Jackson" and history professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"It wasn't a crime to threaten the life of the president back in Jackson's time," Remini said.

There's more to this and well worth reading.