 Booth invested some of his growing wealth in various enterprises during the early 1860s , including land speculation in Boston 's Back Bay section . He also started a business partnership with John A. <unk> , manager of the Cleveland Academy of Music , and another friend , Thomas Mears , to develop oil wells in northwestern Pennsylvania , where an oil boom had started in August 1859 , following Edwin Drake 's discovery of oil there . Initially calling their venture Dramatic Oil ( later renaming it Fuller Farm Oil ) , the partners invested in a 31 @.@ 5 @-@ acre ( 12 @.@ 7 ha ) site along the Allegheny River at Franklin , Pennsylvania , in late 1863 for drilling . By early 1864 , they had a producing 1 @,@ 900 @-@ foot ( 579 m ) deep oil well , named Wilhelmina for Mears ' wife , yielding 25 barrels ( 4 kL ) of crude oil daily , then considered a good yield . The Fuller Farm Oil company was selling shares with a prospectus featuring the well @-@ known actor 's celebrity status as " Mr. J. Wilkes Booth , a successful and intelligent operator in oil lands " , it said . The partners , impatient to increase the well 's output , attempted the use of explosives , which wrecked the well and ended production . Booth , already growing more obsessed with the South 's worsening situation in the Civil War and angered at Lincoln 's re @-@ election , withdrew from the oil business on November 27 , 1864 , with a substantial loss of his $ 6 @,@ 000 ( $ 81 @,@ 400 in 2010 dollars ) investment . 
