Barry Maxwell says that when he was with Spalding and Manning’s Minstrels more than four years ago, a colored boy in Columbia, Tenn., came up and asked for the boss; having found him, he inquired if he wanted anyone to “tote catalogues.” He wanted to pass bills.
Willis Palmer Sweatnam, long known to his familiars as “Billy,” began his theatrical career at the age of seven years, playing comedy parts in white-face with a juvenile company called the Union Children.
His first black-face appearance was at the Western Museum in Cincinnati, four years later, occupying the bone end in a minstrel show.
Mr. Sweatnam entered minstrelsy proper at the age of fifteen, when he was a member of a boat show plying the Little Miami Canal in Ohio; the boat was the “Huron,” and was the fastest boat of that name that traveled the canal. Mr. Sweatnam shortly after this went South, and became lessee of the Savannah Theatre, where minstrel performances were given.
Subsequently he became a member of Fred Wilson’s Minstrels in St. Louis, Newcomb’s Minstrels in Cincinnati, Skiff and Gaylord’s, and Morris Brothers.
Mr. Sweatnam was the principal comedian of Simmons and Slocum’s Minstrels at the opening of that famous organization in Philadelphia. September 6, 1875, he was taken in as a partner, the firm name being Simmons, Slocum and Sweatnam’s Minstrels, by which it was known until October 28, 1876, after which it became Sweatnam’s Minstrels, and later, December 25, 1876, Sweatnam and Fraser’s Minstrels. Mr. Sweatnam played several engagements in San Francisco with Charley Reed’s, Emerson’s, and Maguire’s Minstrels; with Dockstader’s, and Birch and Backus in New York; with Haverly in Chicago, also in Europe; Moore and Burgess in London, England, and Carncross in Philadelphia.
In 1887, commencing July 25, at Albany, N. Y., Sweatnam, Rice and Fagan’s Minstrels were organized; this was one of the most magnificent companies of its kind the world ever saw.
Mr. Sweatnam subsequently played an extended engagement with Cleveland’s Minstrels, and shortly afterwards made his appearance in the “City Directory,” a famous farce of twenty years ago; he was with this company three seasons; several more under the management of Charles E. Blaney, and then with the “County Chairman” for three years.
He was next seen in “George Washington, Jr.”; in all of these plays Mr. Sweatnam’s art shone forth resplendently.