Edwin P. Christy died in May, 1862. George Harrington, known to the stage as George Christy, died in May, 1868; while in April of the latter year Mechanics’ Hall, with which in the minds of so many old New-Yorkers they are both so pleasantly associated, was entirely destroyed by fire, never to be rebuilt for minstrel uses.
The contemporaries and successors of the Christys were numerous and various. The air was full of their music, and dozens of halls in the city of New York alone echoed the patter of their clogged feet for years. Among the more famous of them the following may briefly be mentioned: Buckley’s “New Orleans Serenaders” were organized in 1843; they consisted of George Swayne, Frederick, and R. Bishop Buckley, and were very popular throughout the country. “White’s Serenaders” were at the Melodeon, 53 Bowery, perhaps as early as 1846, and certainly at White’s Athenæum, 585 Broadway, opposite the Metropolitan Hotel, as late as 1872. The Harrington Minstrels were at Palmo’s Opera-house in 1847 or 1848. Bryant’s Minstrels, as their old play-bills show, were organized in 1857, when they occupied Mechanics’ Hall; they went to the Tammany Building on Fourteenth Street in 1868, were at 730 Broadway the next year, and opened the hall on Twenty-third Street near Sixth Avenue in 1870, where they remained until Dan Bryant, the last of his race, died in 1875. Wood’s Minstrels were at 514 Broadway, opposite the St. Nicholas Hotel, in 1862 and later. “Sam” Sharpley’s Minstrels were at 201 Bowery in 1864. “Tony” Pastor’s troupe were in the same building in 1865, where they remained two years; they were upon the site of the Metropolitan Theatre—later Winter Garden—for a few seasons, and until they removed to their present cosey home near Tammany Hall. The San Francisco Minstrels were at 585 Broadway in 1865, and in 1874 went to the more familiar hall on Broadway, opposite the Sturtevant House, Budworth’s Minstrels opened the Fifth Avenue Hall, where the Madison Square Theatre now stands, in 1866. Kelly and Leon, who were on Broadway on the site of Hope Chapel in 1867, where they were credited with having “Africanized opéra bouffe,” followed Budworth to the Twenty-fourth Street house. Besides these were the companies of Morris Brothers, of Cotton and Murphy and Cotton and Reed, of Hooley, of Haverly, of Dockstader, of Pelham, of Pierce, of Campbell, of Pell and Trowbridge, of Thatcher, Primrose and West, of Huntley, and of very many more, to say nothing of the bands of veritable negroes who have endeavored to imitate themselves in imitation of their white brethren in all parts of the land. Brander Matthews, in an article on “Negro Minstrelsy,” printed in the London Saturday Review in 1884, and afterwards published as one of the chapters of a volume of Saturday Review essays, entitled The New Book of Sports (London, 1885), describes a “minstrel show” given by the negro waiters of one of the large summer hotels in Saratoga a few summers before, in which, “when the curtains were drawn aside, discovering a row of sable performers, it was perceived, to the great and abiding joy of the spectators, that the musicians were all of a uniform darkness of hue, and that they, genuine negroes as they were, had ‘blackened up,’ the more closely to resemble the professional negro minstrel.”
GEORGE SWAYNE BUCKLEY.
The dignified and imposing Mr. Johnston has sat during all these years in the centre of a long line of black comedians, which includes such artists as “Eph” Horn, “Dan” Neil, and “Jerry” Bryant—whose real name was O’Brien—Charles H. Fox, “Charley” White, George Christy, “Nelse” Seymour—Thomas Nelson Sanderson—the Buckleys, J. W. Raynor, Birch, Bernard, Wambold, Backus, “Pony” Moore, “Dan” Cotton, “Bob” Hart, “Cool” White, “Dan” Emmett, “Dave” Reed, “Matt” Peel, “Ben” Gardner, Luke Schoolcraft, James H. Budworth, Kelly, Leon, “Frank” Brower, S. C. Campbell, “Gus” Howard, “Billy” Newcomb, “Billy” Gray, Aynsley Cooke, “Hughey” Dougherty, “Tony” Hart, Unsworth, W. H. Delehanty, “Sam” Devere, “Add” Ryman, George Thatcher, “Master Eugene,” “Ricardo,” “Andy” Leavitt, “Sam” Sanford, “Lew” Benedict, “Harry” Bloodgood, “Cal” Wagner, “Ben” Collins, and “Little Mac.”
EPH. HORN.
Nothing like a personal history of any of these men, who have been so prominent upon the negro minstrel stage during the half-century of its existence, can be given here. They have all done much to make the world happier and brighter for a time by their public careers, and they have left a pleasant and a cheerful memory behind them. Their gibes, their gambols, their songs, their flashes of merriment, still linger in our eyes and in our ears; and before many readers scores of quaint figures with blackened faces will no doubt dance to half-forgotten tunes all over these pages, which are too crowded to contain more than the mere mention of their names.
