Finis L. Bates

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Finis Langdon Bates (August 1848 - November 29, 1923) was a Memphis, Tennessee, lawyer who wrote The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth (ISBN 1-4047-0171-0), originally published in 1907.

Finis Langdon Bates was born on a plantation in Itawamba County, Mississippi in 1848 (although 1851 and 1855 have also been cited as the year of his birth; the year 1848 is confirmed by the 1860 Federal Census)([1]), the ninth of twelve children of planter Henderson Wesley Bates and Eliza Elvira Janet (Bourland) Bates. Finis Bates studied law in Carrollton, Mississippi and married Bertie Lee Money about 1869; they would have two daughters and a son.

After 1870 Bates, a newly minted attorney-at-law, moved his family to Texas. As he asserts in The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth, Bates claimed to have met in Granbury, Texas during the 1870s one John St. Helen, who had a particular tendency toward the theatrical and could recite Shakespeare from memory. St. Helen told Bates that he was in reality John Wilkes Booth. Much of the book recounts how St. Helen/Booth escaped the Garrett farm and how he came to settle in Granbury. The details that Bates provided were:

  1. that the leader of the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln was Andrew Johnson.
  2. that the identity of the man killed in the Garrett Barn was a plantation overseer by the name of Ruddy
  3. that St. Helen/Booth asked Ruddy to fetch his papers that had fallen out of his pocket while crossing the Rappahannock, and that while in possession of these papers, Ruddy was shot to death in the Garrett Barn, thus proving the identity of the body as Booth.

Bates claims not to have believed the story and both left Texas shortly thereafter. Bates returned to Mississippi, and after the death of his wife and his subsequent marriage to Madge Doyle around 1890, he moved to Memphis, Tennessee. Years later, Bates read a story in a Memphis newspaper about a David E. George, who had killed himself in Enid, Oklahoma and had also claimed that he was John Wilkes Booth. Bates quickly visited the place, identified the body as that of his old friend John St. Helen, and had the body embalmed. Bates interviewed many locals in order to verify the connection between George and Booth (George was a drifter and morphine user). Bates then wrote the book in order to validate the authenticity of mummy of George as Booth. He toured the mummy in circus sideshows until after World War I when he tried to interest Henry Ford in buying the mummy. Ford had a secretary investigate Bates's claims and concluded that they were complete bunk. The articles were published in the Dearborn Independent.

Bates died at his home at 1234 Harbert Street in Memphis of "cardio-renal" failure on November 29, 1923 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis [2]. His youngest son by his second wife, Langdon Doyle Bates (July 28, 1900- March 6, 1989), was the father of American character actress Kathy Bates.

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[edit] References

  1. ^ 1860 Federal Census for Itawamba County, Mississippi,page 12
  2. ^ http://register.shelby.tn.us/imgView.php?id=333119231129 Death Certificate of Finis Langdon Bates, No. 3331 for 1923. State of Tennessee State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics

[edit] External links


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