They played an extended engagement with Harrigan and Hart’s Company in New York, and after the dissolution of that famous organization, June 13, 1885, they cast their fortunes with Edward Harrigan.
Mr. Goldrich’s demise occurred during this period, since when Mr. Quilter has appeared mostly in dramatic and musical productions. Some of the principal black-face parts portrayed were in “Princess Bonnie” and the “Traveling Salesman.”
Richard (“Dick”) Quilter was born in the County Kerry, Ireland, August 16, 1848.
Peter Goldrich (MacGoldrick) was born in Trenton, N. J., he died in New York City, June 4, 1891; age 42 years.
Cheevers and Kennedy, originally known as the “Buffalo Boys,” a title given to them by Dan Bryant, when as the “infant wonders” they made their first appearance in New York, with Bryant’s Minstrels, doing a double clog reel April 25, 1864.
The following year they went to Carncross and Dixey’s Minstrels in Philadelphia, where they remained until 1871; part of this time they were billed as Masters Joseph and Eddie. August 28, 1871, they opened with the San Francisco Minstrels in New York for the season; that same week they, in conjunction with Charley Gibbons and Bobby Newcomb, formed a dancing quartette, which was then considered quite a novelty.
The following year they returned to Philadelphia as members of Frank Moran’s Minstrels. July 2, 1874, they sailed for England, opening at the London Pavilion July 19. Subsequently an engagement of fourteen months at the Cambridge, same city, followed.
Their success at this house was so pronounced that an extra gallery had to be built to accommodate the patrons of that popular establishment. Equally successful engagements in Dublin and Paris followed. It will be readily seen that these boys were “capital” performers.
Returning to the United States they rejoined Carncross and Dixey in Philadelphia.
Early in 1877 they began a brief engagement with Emerson’s Minstrels in San Francisco, and in the Spring of that year sailed for Australia, where they remained about four years.