once saved from possible serious injury or death by Edwin Booth, whose brother, John Wilkes Booth, assassinated Robert's father. This event took place on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey. The exact date is uncertain, but it is believed to have taken place in late 1863 or early 1864, before John Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Lincoln (April 14, 1865). In a letter written in 1909 to the editor of The Century Magazine, Robert Lincoln recalled what had happened that day: Months afterwards, while serving on Grant's US Army staff, Robert Lincoln recalled the occurrence to Colonel Adam Badeau, a fellow officer who happened to be a friend of Edwin Booth's. Badeau sent a letter to Booth, complimenting the actor for his heroism. Before receiving the letter, Booth had been unaware that the man whose life he had saved on the train platform was the president's son. The knowledge of who he had saved that day was said to have been of some comfort to Booth following his brother's assassination of the president. Grant also sent Booth a letter of gratitude for his action. Some commentators believe that Lincoln had a distant relationship with his father, in part because, during his formative years, Abraham Lincoln spent months on the judicial circuit. Lincoln recalled, "During my childhood and early youth he was almost constantly away from home, attending court or making political speeches." David Herbert Donald quoted Robert as saying that his most vivid image of his father was of packing saddlebags to prepare for his travels through Illinois. Donald's opinion seems to be based on the writings of Lincoln biographer Frederick Trevor Hill and scholar Wayne C. Temple. Hill would write that "The Hon. Robert Lincoln told the writer that he distinctly remembers seeing his father start out on horseback, with his saddle-bags, to accompany the judge on the circuit." Robert’s memory of the saddlebags has been changed from his personal "distinctly remembers" (Hill in 1906) to "the first memory" (Temple in 1960), then in 1995 becoming "the principal memory" of his childhood in Donald's Lincoln. Abraham, on his part, knew that his being away had a potential impact on his sons – he was always anxious to see his children and spend time with them, as evidenced by the following quote from his April 16, 1848, letter to his wife: "don’t let the blessed fellows forget Father".