Richard R. Booth was born 23 Sept 1846 in Jackson, Indiana. He moved from Indiana to Texas with his father, William Lewis Booth, an attorney. The Booth family emmigrated (with William's, brother Charles M.) from western New York state (Farmington, Ontario County) to Indiana and (then in 1849) to Genesee Twp, Whiteside, Illinois, to Hempstead, Waller County, Texas, and Hillsboro, Hill County, Texas.
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| Present day photos of farm now on Booth homestead, "2nd farmhouse north of SW corner of section 22 on Coleta Rd," Genesee Twp, Whiteside, Illinois |
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| Present day photos of farm now on Booth homestead, "2nd farm north of SW corner of section 22 on Coleta Rd," Genesee Twp, Whiteside, Illinois |
Richard's first wife was Jemima J. Johnson, who gave birth to two children. When she died the same year as her second child, (1868) Richard didn't long remain a widower with 2 year old WIlliam Lewis, (1866-1940, named after his grandfather.) On July 20, 1869 he married his second wife, Eugenia Almetta Whitty, in Hillsboro, Texas, where they lived according to the 1870 census.
I think his father William, was living in Hempstead, Texas prior to 1880, though he had returned to Hillsoboro when he died in 1893.
Richard's son Edwin Whitty Booth was born in 1871 in Hillsboro. The William L. Booth Sr. family home in Hillsboro may have been where Richard was living with his wife and children, but apparently he was working in Hempstead as well. The top of the following photocopied page names my great-grandmother, Eugenia Almeta Booth, daughter of Richard R. Booth, born in 1873 in Hillsboro, Texas. They had one other daughter (unnamed) who died at birth in 1875.
The following notes are photo-copied onto his Ancestry.com pages, and give a source of his lineage back to his great grandfather. It also tells of how he was shot by a man named Richard Dilk, of Springfield. Richard Booth died either on July 29, or May 30, 1879, at age 32, in Hempstead, Waller County,Texas. I think Richard Dilk was said to have been a man he was prosecuting. (The notes below give date of death in July, while Ancestry.com gives the May date.)
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| Early notes on Booth genealogy |
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| originally by Anna Booth Calder and then by Laurie Mae Booth Calder. |
There are maybe a few mistakes in these written records, since William Lewis Booth is said to have been born in Livingston County, NY, rather than Farmington, Ontario County, NY (as Ancestry lists) I wish the whole page had been copied also, since many dates kind of slide off the edge.
Texas Index Cards, (a source that kept track of Texas biographies I believe,) said Richard R. Booth had been an "attorney 1876-1878, Waller County and Navarro County Judge." I wish there was access to whatever biography the index card refers.
At one point in my many years, I held a newspaper clipping which told of the murder of Richard R. Booth, which was in the possession of my Great Aunt Margaret. I can't find any records from Hempstead archives, nor Hillsboro. I wonder which publication printed that article.
