Minstrel shows

Diary of a Little Girl in Old New York

Source: Catherine Elizabeth Havens, Diary of a Little Girl in Old New York (New York: Henry Collins Brown, 1920), p. 108

Text: A while ago my brother took some of us to Christy’s Minstrels. They are white men, blacked up to look just like negroes. As the last man went off the stage, he stumbled and fell flat, and then he said, “Sambo, why am I like one of Walter Scott’s pomes? Give it up? Because I’m de lay ob de last minstrel!” And everybody laughed, and one of them said, “Pompy, my wife had an awful cold, and de doctor told her to put a plaster on her chest; but she didn’t have no chest, so she put it on her band-box and it drew her bonnet all out of shape.” And then we all clapped and laughed. They are awfully funny. They act on Broadway, down near Grand Street.

Comments: Catherine Elizabeth Havens (1839-?) spent her childhood in New York and began writing a diary when she was ten. This passage comes from a long diary entry for 6 August 1850 (her eleventh birthday). Her family lived in Brooklyn, on Ninth Street. Christy’s Minstrels were a troupe of blackface performers (i.e. white performers blacked up), formed in 1843 by Edwin Pearce Christy. At this time the troupe regularly performed at the Mechanics’ Hall at 472 Broadway, New York.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

Posted in 1850s, Minstrel shows, USA and tagged Catherine Elizabeth Havens, Diaries, New York on March 23, 2017 by urbanora. Leave a comment

Search for:

Theatregoing is an ongoing survey reproducing eyewitness testimony of seeing theatrical productions, from the sixteenth century to the present day.

Enter your email address to follow Theatregoing and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

Venues

Witnesses

John Quincy Adams – Maurice B. Adams – James Agate – Archibald Alison – William Allingham – Hans Christian Andersen – Matthew Arnold – Walter Benjamin – Arnold Bennett – Mary Berry – Laurence Binyon – Harry Blacker – James Boswell – Reginald Brett – William Wells Brown – Hablot Knight Browne – Orville Hickman Browning – Frances Burney – Aaron Burr – John Byng – Neville Cardus – Percival Frederick Chambers – William Rufus Chetwood – Colley Cibber – Thomas Coryat – Samuel Curwen – Richard Harding Davis – Charles Dickens – Leonard Digges – William Dodd – Robert Dodge – John Downes – William Seymour Edwards – T.S. Eliot – John Evelyn – Henry T. Finck – Richard Flecknoe – Violet May Flynn – Simon Forman – Margaret Fuller – Marguerite Gardiner – Edmund Gayton – Francis Gentleman – Kate Terry Gielgud – Mary Gladstone – Oliver Goldsmith – James Greenwood – Catherine Elizabeth Havens – William Hazlitt – Paul Hentzner – C.W. Heriot – Harold Hobson – Thomas Jefferson Hogg – Philip Hone – Horace – Jack Howison – Anna Brownell Jameson – Franz Kafka – Ryszard Kapuściński – Fanny Kemble – Harry Kessler – Mirza Abul Hassan Khan – Karl Kingsley Kitchen – Herbert Kubly – Charles A. Leale – Henry Leigh – George Henry Lewes – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg – E.V. Lucas – Eric Lugg – Micheál Mac Liammóir – John Manningham – John Marston – Westland Marston – Henry Matthews – Alice Meynell – Paul Morand – Hannah More – Karl Philipp Moritz – Henry Morley – Gouverneur Morris – Naser al-Din Shah Qajar – Paul Nash – Philipp von Neumann – Sylas Neville – Harriette Story Paige – William Osborn Payne – Henry Peacham – Elisabeth Pepys – Samuel Pepys – Thomas Platter – Channing Pollock – Guy Price – Sydney Race – Henry Reeve – John Rickman – Robert Roberts – Henry Crabb Robinson – C.H. Rolph – William Howard Russell – George Augustus Sala – Ignatius Sancho – Walter Scott – Mihail Sebastian – Frances Lady Shelley – Mary Shelley – Benjamin Silliman – Louis Simond – Robert Southey – Reginald Spurgeon – Sidney H. Stewart – Philip Stubbes – Jun’ichirō Tanizaki – Thomas Tegg – Robert Tofte – Wolfe Tone – Boris Uxkull – Queen Victoria – Baron Waldstein – Henry Wansey – Evelyn Waugh – Lupold von Wedel – Edward William Wifen – Orrin Sage Wightman – Ashton Rollins Willard – Henry Wotton – Xenophon – Edmund Yates –

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31