An Assassin's Boston Connection

Boston’s historic Parker House Hotel has had associations with many famous people since its founding in 1855. Even some of its employees have graced the history books—Malcom X worked there bussing tables in the 1940s and Ho Chi Minh was a baker in the hotel’s kitchen in the early 1900s. The hotel was also destined to host a presidential assassin. 

Eight days before the murder of President Abraham Lincoln, his assassin—John Wilkes Booth—stayed at the Parker House (April 5-6, 1865). Booth was in town visiting his older brother Edwin Booth. The elder Booth, an actor, was in the midst of a three-week engagement at the Boston Theater. Unlike his brother, Edwin supported the Union cause in the Civil War and even voted for Lincoln. He later wrote in a letter, “When I told him [John] I had voted for Lincoln’s re-election he expressed deep regret, and declared his belief that Lincoln would be made king of America”. 

During his stay at the Parker House, John ominously frequented Rowland Edwards’ Pistol Gallery on nearby Green Street. But this was not Booth’s only time at the Parker House. In fact, the hotel had served as a meeting place for Booth and Confederate Secret Service agents back in July of 1864. On that occasion it is said that Booth first put forward his plot to kill the president.

And to further cement Booth’s connection to Boston, he was eventually tracked down and killed in Caroline County, Virginia by British-born Boston resident Thomas “Boston” Corbett. So, if you ever happen to pass by the stately Parker House on Park Street in Boston, you’ll know some of the rich history that has taken place behind its walls.

The Politics Of Spelling Reform

Even before the Revolutionary War, a movement arose to “De-Brit-ify” American English. In fact, in 1768, Benjamin Franklin himself proposed an entirely new alphabet that removed what he called “useless letters” like C, J, Q, W, X and Y. Obviously, that didn’t catch on.

But the movement re-gained steam in 1828 when Noah Webster introduced his American Dictionary Of The English Language. He replaced British spellings like “colour” with the more simplified “color”. And, he shifted “re” to “er” in words like “theater”. We still live with these Webster reforms.

And the spelling reform movement was really energized by the U.S. President who personified American energy—Theodore Roosevelt. He actually issued an Executive Order that mandated simplified spellings of over 300 words. For example, T.R. decreed that “dropped” be changed to “dropt’“ and “kissed” be morphed into “kist” (which of course, the StarKist tuna people picked up on). Oddly, the President (known as “The Trust-Buster”) had made strange political bedfellows with mega-industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who originally floated many of these spelling reform ideas. By the way, Congress quickly nixed Teddy’s ideas.

Fast forward to the development of modern American baseball. New team owners wanted to cement their team images in the minds of fans—something simple they could remember and that would easily fit in newspaper headlines. So, the “Boston Red Stockings” and the “Chicago White Stockings” both simplified their monikers to just “Sox”. Ditto the “Cincinnati Red Stockings”, who became the “Cincinnati Reds”.

All of these baseball-related changes—and many others we use every day—had their roots in the uniquely American political movement for spelling reform. Go Red Sox!