Mazzellah Ainsley Scott is one of the oldest, and at the same time one of the youngest looking minstrels. Mr. Scott, who has a keen sense of humor, gravely declares that he was born in Nashua, N. H., July 26, 1820; he looks 60.
Mr. Scott sometime ago told the author that he (Scott) made his first appearance on the stage at the age of three years as the child in “Pizarro”; then Mr. Scott had to catch a train, the author caught a cold, but managed to get the following data:
In 1858 he was with the New Orleans Opera Troupe (a minstrel company), the following year he was at Bryant’s Minstrels in New York; he has the distinction of being the only one living who was on the programme the night that “Dixie” was first sung, September 12, 1859.
Mr. Scott was in partnership with Cool Burgess in a minstrel show in 1867; the same year he was with LaRue’s Minstrels, also Lloyd and Bidaux’s Minstrels.
In 1862 he was with Sanford’s Minstrels; in 1864 at the opening of M. C. Campbell’s Minstrels, in New York, June 27. He was with the San Franciscos, also in New York, and with Duprez and Green’s Company.
In 1884 he was with the opera of “Princess Ida”; in 1892 with Miss Sidonie, as Scott and Sidonie played a sketch in vaudeville, called “Roundsey, the Copper.”
Mrs. Ainsley Scott died May 31, 1867.
When last heard of, a short time ago, Mr. Scott was a pedestrian.
Wm. H. Brockway was a well-known interlocutor of minstrelsy. He was with Morris Bros; Pell and Trowbridge’s Minstrels in Boston in the Spring of 1859, and continued with them practically until July 27, 1861, when in conjunction with Charley Morris and Jno. E. Taylor, they formed a minstrel company, opening in Gloucester, Mass., on the above date.
Mr. Brockway joined Kelly and Leon’s Minstrels in New York early in 1868, and continued with them about a year. He joined Bryant’s Minstrels in New York about 1871, and remained with them until the death of Dan Bryant, April 10, 1875.