Biographical Sketch
The marriage of actor George C. Howard to Caroline Emily Fox in 1844
linked the theatrical careers of not only Howard and Fox, but also those of two
of Caroline's brothers and two of the Howard children (Cordelia and Walter), as
well as cousins George L. and Frank E. Aiken.
George C. Howard (1815-1887) was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He
appeared in amateur theatricals in Boston in 1837, then took engagements in
Philadelphia and Baltimore. In 1842 he joined the company at the Tremont
Theatre in Boston where he met, or was reacquainted with, thirteen-year-old
Caroline Emily Fox (1829-1908). Caroline, already an experienced actress, had
appeared as a child as one of the Little
Foxes with her brothers George L., James A., Henry N., and Charles K.
Fox. She married Howard in October 1844.
In early 1846, Howard took over the management of the Fox troupe and
began billing them as Howard and Foxes. The
troupe toured through New England, securing engagements in previously
theater-hostile towns because of the air of respectability lent by their status
as a family. As the Foxes grew up they left the troupe as they developed
careers of their own. James A. Fox quit the stage in 1850, much to the
advantage of George L. Fox, who had been overshadowed by James. Little Henry
had died in 1844. In the fall of 1850 George L. Fox was hired at the National
Theatre (N.Y.), though he continued to work with George C. Howard throughout
the 1850s.
In 1852 Howard commissioned Caroline's cousin George L. Aiken to write
an acting version of Harriet Beecher Stowe's
Uncle Tom's Cabin,
probably as a vehicle for his four-year-old daughter Cordelia. Aiken's
dramatization was produced at the Troy (N.Y.) Museum in September 1852 with
Howard as St. Clare, Caroline as Topsy, Cordelia as Eva, and the playwright as
George Harris. Though the script ran at three hours fifteen minutes, it only
took the story up through little Eva's death, and in November Aiken prepared a
sequel that ended properly with Stowe's denouement. The two scripts were
combined later that month into a drama of six acts which became the standard
acting version of
Uncle Tom's Cabin. When
Alexander H. Purdy agreed to put on the play the following July at his National
Theatre in New York, where George L. Fox was employed, it became a sensation,
running at that theater until April 1854. The play was performed continuously
in the United States for eighty years, a remarkable run by any standard. The
Howards appeared in
Uncle Tom's Cabin until
1857.
Howard undertook the management of the Troy Adelphi Theatre in 1857,
but the season failed and George, Caroline, and Cordelia were soon back on the
road. In 1863 Howard stepped in as acting manager of Fox's Bowery Theatre,
filling in for his brother-in-law while Fox served in the Civil War. He stayed
at the Bowery until Fox's managerial role terminated in 1867, but even the
presence of a relative as business manager could not prevent other employees
from gambling away the receipts. Howard appeared on the stage intermittently
until he died in 1887.
Caroline Emily Fox Howard continued to
play Topsy until her husband died in 1887. She lived in Cambridge until her
death in 1908.
After starring in
Uncle Tom's Cabin,
Katy or the Hot Corn Girl,
and
The Death of Little Eva,
a shortened version of
Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Cordelia Howard (1848-1941) retired from the stage
in 1861 at thirteen years of age. She completed her education in Cambridge,
Massachusetts and married Edmund Jesse Macdonald in 1871.
After
Uncle Tom's Cabin,
George L. Fox (1825-1877) continued appearing at the
National where he stayed until he decided to become a manager in 1858. That
year he leased the Bowery Theatre, then the New Bowery, with partner James W.
Lingard, but in 1862 he split with Lingard and opened his own George L. Fox's
Olympic. Less than a month later he went back to the old Bowery as lessee where
he stayed until 1867, appearing in a variety of roles. In 1868 at Mrs. John
Wood's Olympic Theatre he was first seen in a pantomime called
Humpty Dumpty. This
quickly became his most popular and lasting role. He scored another success in
1870 with his travesty of
Hamlet at Wood's
Olympic. Four years later, he tried management again, this time lasting six
weeks as head of Fox's Broadway Theatre. In 1875 he began showing signs of
dementia. During a performance of
Humpty Dumpty in
November 1875 he was removed from the stage by George C. Howard and placed in
an insane asylum. He died in 1877.
Charles K. Fox (1833-1875) acted with the
Little Foxes and Howard and Foxes, then appeared in
Uncle Tom's Cabin. Later
he became assistant manager to his father. In the 1860s he played Pantaloon to
his brother George's Clown. He died in 1875 of typhoid fever.
Frank E. Aiken (1836-1910) was born in
Boston. He began his dramatic career acting under the management of his uncle
George H. Wyatt and went on to become a leading man before going into theater
management in Philadelphia. He opened the Aiken Theatre in 1873 and ran it for
fifteen years.
Walter S. Howard (1868-1945), son of
George C. Howard and Caroline Emily Fox, was an actor and stage manager with
the Joseph Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, Augustin Daly, and Ada Rehan Companies
before his retirement in 1912.
Scope and Contents
The George C. Howard and Family Collection was gathered together by
Howard's grandson, George P. Howard, and brings together original materials
passed down within the family, as well as George P. Howard's notes and research
materials. Prompt books and playbills comprise the bulk of the collection, with
programs, posters, original manuscripts, daguerreotypes, and assorted materials
making up the balance. The collection is organized into three series with
materials arranged chronologically or alphabetically by title or author where
possible: I.
Uncle Tom's Cabin,
1852-1935, II. Acting Companies, 1833-1928, and III. Individuals,
1837-1963.
The
Uncle Tom's Cabin series
is split into two subseries: A. Scripts, 1852-1870s? (21 folders) and B.
Playbills, Prints, and Clippings, 1852-1935 (3 folders). The George L. Aiken
and H. J. Conway versions of
Uncle Tom's Cabin are
included in the Scripts subseries, the Aiken version represented by several
prompt books used by the Howards between 1852 and probably as late as the
1870s. The Conway version was produced at least twice at the Boston Museum, in
1852 and 1876. Aiken also wrote a dramatization of Stowe's
The Key to Uncle Tom's
Cabin, which was produced in December 1853; the holograph manuscript is
located here. Many of the scripts contain performance annotations. Subseries B
contains assorted materials relating to
Uncle Tom's Cabin that
were collected by the Howards, including playbills for rival stage versions of
Uncle Tom's Cabin by
Conway and C. W. Taylor.
The Acting Companies series is composed of three subseries: A. Fox
Company, 1833-46 (3 folders, 1 oversize box), B. Howard-Fox Company, 1846-1928
(16 folders, 2 oversize boxes), and C. Related Material, 1840s (1 folder).
Materials are arranged chronologically within each subseries. The Fox Company
subseries contains playbills, posters, and daguerreotypes which document the
activities of George C. Howard and the Fox children while the latter were still
managed by their parents. (Though Caroline and George were married in October
1844, playbills from 1845 and early 1846 with both Howard and the Foxes on the
same bill are included here. Starting around April 1846, the Howard-Fox
appearances were billed as being under the direction
of Mr. G. Howard; these and later playbills are located in the
Howard-Fox Company subseries.) The Howard-Fox materials tell of the many
Uncle Tom's Cabin
performances as well as other productions in which Cordelia Howard acted. Most
of the later items refer to George, Caroline, or Cordelia Howard, the other
Foxes having moved on to careers of their own. The last subseries holds the
covers of an account book in which Emily C. (Wyatt) Fox kept
Little Foxes and Howard and Foxes playbills for performances dating
through 1851.
The Individuals series pulls together materials concerning four actors
who either were not members of the Fox or Howard-Fox companies, or are
represented here by materials from their solo
careers: A. George C. Howard, 1837-42 (2 folders), B. George L. Fox, 1861-1903
(7 folders, 2 oversize boxes), C. Frank E. Aiken, 1880-1910 (4 folders), and D.
Walter S. Howard, 1879-1963 (22 folders). The George C. Howard subseries
comprises a property letter, probably kept as a souvenir, and a playbill which
predate his association with the Foxes. The George L. Fox subseries contains
Professional and Personal subseries which include an account book from Fox's
first attempt at theater management and a
Humpty Dumpty script
written for him but never performed due to illness, as well as programs
featuring Fox's second wife, Mattie Temple Fox, and their daughter Georgia L.
Fox. The Frank E. Aiken subseries contains four folders of programs and
clippings, as well as memorabilia such as a letter certifying his copyright for
the five-act comedy
Under the Arch. The
Walter S. Howard subseries is divided into three subseries: Professional,
1889-1935, Personal, 1879-1963, and Creative Works, 1928, nd. Howard's
professional career with the Joseph Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, and Ada Rehan
Companies is well documented with programs, playbills, scripts kept as
souvenirs, and assorted other materials. The Personal items relate to his wife,
Minnie Parker Howard, her father, and Howard's son George P. Howard, whose
research notes about the Howard-Fox family history are placed here. The
Creative Works subseries contains a short autobiographical account of Howard's
days with Joseph Jefferson and two longer narratives about the performance
history of
Uncle Tom's Cabin, one
fiction, the other nonfiction.
The Theater Arts Library at the Ransom Center contains ca. 200
published plays and books collected by George C. Howard, many with annotations
by unidentified playwrights, actors, and stage managers, as well as a 1968
dissertation by William Jackson Kessler about the early productions of the
Aiken-Howard versions of
Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Abbreviations in the Folder List
- fc file cabinet
- ff flat file
- ob oversize box