Oklahoma Town's Connection to Lincoln's Assassination

Darren Brown, News9.com

ENID, OKLAHOMA -- Could a town in north central Oklahoma be connected to Abraham Lincoln's killer?

Oklahoma's connection to the Lincoln assassination is a fantastic story over one hundred years in the making. It starts with Booth's widely publicized death at Garrett's farm twelve days after he shot the president, takes a curious turn in Enid, Oklahoma almost forty years later, and continues to this day.

Did Booth really die at Garrett's farm, or is it possible he escaped and surfaced many years later in Oklahoma?

The family of John Wilkes Booth is convinced that he escaped south to Mexico, spent time in Texas, and eventually made his way north to El Reno then to Enid, where he died in 1903.

In December of 1902, a man calling himself David E. George checked into the Grand Avenue Hotel in downtown Enid. A few weeks later he committed suicide by drinking some wine laced with strychnine bought from a local drugstore.

That in itself wasn't unusual. However, George's deathbed confession from a few years earlier coupled with his manner of death, set off a national firestorm of debate.

George had lived in El Reno for a short while in 1900. While there, he became extremely ill. Thinking he was dying, he called to the woman tending to him and confessed that he was actually John Wilkes Booth and had killed President Lincoln in 1865. George recovered and vanished from El Reno a short time later. When he died in 1903, it was reported in the local newspaper and seen by the same woman. The woman was married to a Methodist minister who, in 1900 had been pastoring a church in El Reno but now was pastoring in Enid. The minister and his wife rushed to the funeral parlor, and seeing that it was the same man that they had met years earlier, told the funeral staff that the government just might be interested in this man.

That's where the story gets even more confusing. There's a supposed letter that George wrote before he died to an attorney friend of his in Memphis. The letter disappeared. There's also the mummy. George's mummified body was actually displayed at a funeral parlor in Enid for years before traveling the country as a sideshow attraction. The mummy was last seen sometime in the 1970s, and is feared to have been destroyed in a fire.

One fact that's not disputed, is that there was a David E. George that died in Enid in 1903. And even back then, there were those who wanted to believe.

Margaret Jones became Garfield County's Court Clerk recently, and came across a curious envelope while organizing some old files. The envelope bore the name of David E. George, and below it the phrase "Allegedly John Wilkes Booth." "Of course immediately I wanted to open it and see what it said," Jones laughed.

Unfortunately, there was nothing in George's papers to shed any light on his mysterious past, save his signature and listings of his supposed ownings.

The Garfield Furniture Company though, provides even further tangible evidence of David George's existence. The business has been in the same spot since 1922. Prior to that it was a hardware store, and prior to that, the Grand Avenue Hotel. Many of the old hotel's rooms have been destroyed in the years since, but Russ Frazee, whose family started the furniture business, made it a point to re-create one particular room. Upstairs, amid stacks of bar stools and plastic-wrapped sofas is the death room, the room where David George died. Frazee admits that it's not the real room. That one, number four, was destroyed during long-ago renovations.

But that hasn't stopped folks from all over from stopping in to take a peek.

"A lot of people have taken road trips," said Frazee. "Some of 'em are a little radical on their opinion, but it's always fun to meet people."

Frazee's convinced that David George was actually John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's assassin. But others in Enid aren't so easily swayed.

Jack Garrison is pastor of Enid's United Pentecostal Church, a Civil War buff, and a retired history teacher. He's read countless books on Lincoln's death and the conspiracy theories that surround it. "The preponderance of the evidence just leaves no doubt in my mind that John Booth died on the front porch of the Garrett farmhouse," Garrison said. "I think even the people who really want to believe it, in the back of their mind, they have some doubts."

Wade Burleson also has a passion for Oklahoma history. He's written a few books, and has given speeches on what he calls Enid's "Booth legend." "I'm not convinced that David George is John Wilkes Booth," he said. "But I've read the source material, I've studied it, I've investigated it, and there are some good arguments."