Saw this in my local newspaper today and thought the Payne list may be interested - this person claims a Payne family member married John Wilkes Booth, President Lincoln's assassin: Source: Brentwood Journal, Brentwood, TN, Thursday April 13, 2000 by Clint Confehr, Staff Writer WILSON COUNTY MAN NAMED HEAD LIBRARIAN (excerpts follow) Brentwood's new head librarian is currently the director of public services at the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville where he's worked since 1994. Charles A. "Chuck" Sherrill, 41, of Mount Juliet is scheduled to start leading the Brentwood Library on May 8. ...before his work in state archives he found a record implying John Wilkes Booth escaped to Tennessee after assassinating President Lincoln on April 14, 1865. History books report Booth died in a Virginia barn. The record Sherrill found is a marriage license for one of Sherrill's ancestors and a man named Booth. His parents are originally from Tennessee. They moved to Ohio during WWII, but retired in Estill Springs. Sherrill lives in Mount Juliet. As for his ancestor's legendary marriage license with Lincoln's assassin, the record is part of the Franklin County archives in Winchester [TN], Sherrill said. Booth "was actually married to a member of my family, so the story goes," Sherrill said, "assuming you believe he was still alive in 1872. "It's not his signature, " Sherrill said of the Booth name in the record. "It's the name written in by the county clerk on the marriage license." The bride to be was Louisa Payne. "She came out of Payne's Cove in Grundy County, settled by Poindexter Payne," Sherrill said. "I found the marriage license in the courthouse years and years ago while studying genealogy as a teenager," he said. "My grandfather had told me the story, so I was looking for proof."