Who's Harry? An old American theatre photo deciphered...

 

Here it is. Labelled "Harry B Hudson". Never heard of him. Curiosity needs to be assuaged. And those pink slippers.. I have an hour to spare ...

An hour? Humph. 

First red light. Not to be found in any public record except the death lists. Fair enough, it's a stage name. Henry Hudson? You wouldn't call a little American boy by that famed name. Two errors there. He wasn't American and the 'B' for his putative middle name was phony. Americans, as we know, and inclined to have middle initials rather than middle names.

I will spare you the convoluted paths by which I have travelled disrobing him. I shall merely say that he was pretty certainly born in Canada, as were all his siblings. And the Harry shows signs of not being 'Henry' but Harold. But I have no proof. The only document which I finally dredged up was his wedding certificate, and on that he just puts 'Harry (no B) Hudson'. Which is false anyhow!

In 1833 (21 March) a 23 year-old English clerical worker by name Timothy Hunton emigrated to the New World. He chose to push his pen in Montréal, and there he married in 1837 Miss [Barbara] Ann Hamilton, seemingly from Scotland. And they bred. Henry Hunton was theoretically born in 1839. So why is there no record? Canada is usually pleasingly punctilious. I find Mr and Mrs Hunton in Bytown,  Ontario with sons William Hamilton H and George Weatherby H, and daughters Amelia Charlotte and Eliza Hudson H .. ah! Hudson! .. in 1851. Harry would have been 12. Where is he? William is 12. So ... is William = Harry? Born Ottawa 1839. No. Because when Harry dies, William is still alive and clerking. Something's afoot. Harry said many a time that Ann Hunton was his mamma ... but something don't tally!

Anyway, the little family stayed in Ontario, where papa Timothy died in 1855, then 19 year-old George in 1859, and some time in the early sixties crossed the border to settle in America. Maybe because Harry, and little sister Eliza, has launched themselves on theatrical careers. 

Harry seems to have started at the theatre in Cairo, Illinois around 1863. He moved on to Wood's at Cincinnati, then Mc Vickers and Crosby's in Chicago ... he was on the way up as a leading man. In 1867 both he and Eliza were engaged at the Boston Museum. In the seventies I see him in John Ford's Comedy Company with J W Wallack and Caroline Richings, at the Olympic Theater with the Lingards (Eliza too) in Life's a Dream, at the Walnut Street, Philadelphia as Antonio in a version of The Tempest which featured Rivière's Babil and Bijou chorus 'Spring, Gentle Spring' (wot?!) ... And then I see him billed in Bidwell and McDonough's tour of ... The Black Crook! While Eliza was touring with Buffalo Bill!

In the mid seventies I see him again in Cincinnati, then doing summer season at Rochester, while Eliza went on tour with Lawrence Barrett, then (amongst other engagements) playing Neil Crompton alongside Frank Mayo's Davy Crockett (1876).

Mayo

In 1878, Harry got married. The lady was 'Emmeline Hyde' (eig Houston) who was said to be 'of the Lydia Thompson troupe'. Ummm. Can't find her. Not even in my exhaustive published biography of Lydia. Ah well, peasants and villagers time?

After a stint with the Majeronis (Jealousy), Harry joined Oliver Doud Byron's company and played for half a dozen years in pieces such as Across the Continent, Hero (Benito Lordo, a Mexican), Ten Thousand Miles Away, The Inside Track. In 1890 both he and Eliza played with Ullie Ackerstrom in Annette, the Dancing Girl, before he moved on to support Nellie McHenry in Lady Peggy ...  

And that's where I stop. Harry died in 1892 (25 April). He was buried in the Actors' Fund plot ....

Eliza had a good career. She is credited with three husbands, but I think only two probably kosher. As her gravestone, shared with her mother, shows ...

The family historians would have us believe otherwise!

Look where that photo has led me!  Into a mass of maybes ....

Ah well, 5.30pm. I've earned my gin today ...