The Booth Legend of Guntown

The Booth legend belongs to the shelf where family tradition, cemetery markers, old roads, rail memory, and official history sit close enough to trouble one another.

The Official Story

The accepted historical account says John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, fled Washington, and died after being found at Garrett's farm in Virginia in April 1865. Official and public-history sources treat the body examined after the Garrett barn event as Booth's body.

The Guntown Tradition

The Guntown version tells a different story. The currently available public retelling is the 2014 HottyToddy article by Jack Lawton with commentary by Dick Gentry, which points back to a 1995 Tupelo Daily Journal column by Phyllis Harper and Emma Emily Epting Pressey's account.

In that local tradition, Booth allegedly survived, came to Mississippi, and became connected to Guntown through Dr. John Fletcher Booth, a claimed upstairs hiding place, Emma Emily Epting Pressey or "Cousin Em," Jennie Booth Epting, Smith Cemetery, and the later marker tradition.

This page does not present that survival claim as proven. It treats the story as civic folklore: a local memory worth preserving because people carried it, named it, and attached it to places.

The Girl and the Attic

One of the most vivid details is Jennie Booth Epting. In the later HottyToddy / Dick Gentry retelling, she is described as the "little girl who helped carry food to JWB in his upstairs hiding place."

That phrase is included as reported local and family lore. It is not presented as Jennie's own firsthand quotation unless the original source is found and confirms that posture.

The Marker

Smith Cemetery enters the story through the claimed Booth marker. The stone does not prove Booth is buried there. It proves that the Booth-in-Guntown story became serious enough, in at least one family line, to be marked as a grave.

Later local-lore accounts say Tommy Palmer placed the marker in 1988 based on Cousin Em's instructions. That remains a source lead until marker photographs, cemetery context, and primary documentation are assembled.

DNA, Exhumation, and the National Dispute

Booth-survival claims are not only a Guntown phenomenon. Similar claims have reached courts, exhumation requests, and DNA discussions elsewhere. That broader dispute does not prove the Guntown tradition, but it explains why a local marker story can sit inside a larger national afterlife.

Why It Matters

The legend does not have to be true to matter. Minutes from Brice's Crossroads, Guntown preserves one of Mississippi's strangest Lincoln-assassination legends.

What We Still Need

• Document Smith Cemetery without publishing exact private-access directions.
• Photograph the Booth marker and surrounding cemetery context.
• Determine landowner, access, and cemetery status before public mapping.
• Locate or document the Dr. John Fletcher Booth house site.
• Find the original Phyllis Harper / Tupelo Daily Journal source if possible.
• Confirm whether the large two-story Booth house with a porch well is gone, where it stood, and when it burned.