John Wilkes Booth Green

On December 17, 1872, deep in the heart of Texas, a baby boy was born to Gustavus and Millicent Green. Gus had served in the Civil War, fighting for his native Texas in the Confederate 21st regiment Texas Cavalry. Millicent's roots were in South Carolina. And their baby's name - John Wilkes Booth Green.

Would you name your child after this man?

Coincidence? Not likely. Nineteenth century United States Census reports show none of the other Green children listed with even ONE middle name, let alone two.

After the news last week of Shop Rite refusing to write the name "Adolf Hitler" on the birthday cake of a Holland Township couple's three-year-old son, I wondered when this phenomenon began. Is this a product of today's world?

I am certainly not equating the worldwide abomination that was Hitler with the assassination of one American President at the close of the Civil War - except that in both 1872 and 2005 each set of parents has taken the naming of their child after a notorious figure to be some sort of statement.

Adolf Hitler Campbell may be unique, but that was not the case for John Wilkes Booth Green. In the years following Lincoln's assassination, parents all over the south bestowed the ignominious appellation on their boys.

John Wilkes Booth O'Brien of North Carolina, born 1870; John Wilkes Booth Sharp of Georgia, born 1871; John Wilkes Booth Wagoner of West Virginia, born 1873; and John Wilkes Booth Shipley of Arkansas, born 1874, to name a few.

What happened to J.W.B. Green? He served as an army sergeant in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, then returned to Marble Falls, Texas where he worked as a clerk for the Hundley-Marrs Company - whatever that was.

No word on what name he used on his birthday cake.