A New Angle on the Chapmans Wayne H

HISTORICAL SOCIETY NOTES AND DOCUMENTS PITTSBURGH AND THE FIRST SHOWBOAT: A New Angle on the Chapmans Wayne H. Claeren

on the Chapman family, creators of America's first success- Factsful showboat, are difficult to obtain. One source, for example, lists William Chapman, Sr., as making his American acting debut as King Henry inRichard IIIin1827. l Another contemporary says Chapman's first appearance in the United States was as Iago in an 1828 production of Othello. 2 Still another finds him debuting in America as Billy Lackaday in Sweethearts and Wives.* There is similar disagreement about the time and place of William Chapman's death. Other members of the family have equally confusing histories, and there is even a question as tohow many Chapmans actually existed. Itis reasonable, however, to include in the original showboat family the following members :William, Sr., and his wife Sarah ;their three sons, William B., George, and Samuel (who died before the so-called Floating Theater began) ;two daughters, Caroline and Theresa; and various grandchildren, most notably Harry and another Caroline. 4 Because the Chapmans spent much of their time touring the western rivers, more information about them is based on frontier anecdotes than on the newspapers and playbills which normally trace the careers of actors. Atleast one author, George D. Ford, has collect- ed some of these legends and elaborated on them to such an extent that they contradict the few verifiable facts available. Ford gives as history, for instance, an incredible story of William B. Chapman, Jr., escaping a shotgun wedding. Young William,says Ford, once evaded a venge- ful father and several armed assassins by falling through the vampire trap at Covent Garden, fighting a series of duels, and finally being

Wayne Claeren received a Ph.D. in Theater Arts from the University of Pittsburgh. He now teaches drama at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. i —Editor 1 Francis Courtney Wemyss, Wemyss' Chronology of the American Stage from 1752 to 1852 (1852; reprint ed., New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968), 40. 2 Noah M.Ludlow, Dramatic Life as IFound It(1880; reprint ed., New York: Benjamin Blom, 1966), 569. 3 T. Allston Brown, History of the American Stage (New York, 1870), 69. 4 William A. Chapman, the famous lowcomedian who first appeared inthe United States in 1839, was no relation.

j APRIL 232 HISTORICAL SOCIETY NOTES AND DOCUMENTS shanghaied onto a ship bound for America by his own brothers. 5 The Chapmans had many interesting adventures but this was not one of them. Most sources of showboat history seem to agree on only four things about the Chapmans :They began the first successful American showboat in 1831 and continued in the business until 1847; they had little or no desire for money or for fame; they were clannish to an extreme (It has even been suggested that they had a secret family language which they used to the consternation of other actors in the greenroom) ;6 they loved fishing with a family-wide passion and which was a primary factor in their life style. A closer look at the Chapmans and their times, however, indicates that at least two, and possibly three, of these commonly held beliefs are incorrect assumptions. The picture of a jolly family lazily floating down the Mississippi, doing an occasional show, and spend- ing more time fishing than working, is picturesque but untrue. Why, then, did the Chapmans begin the first showboat ? In 1827 the Chapmans left England, where disastrous conditions had descended upon members of the acting profession. A few months earlier, J. B. Booth had described the situation in England in a letter to his father : The distress is so excessive ... that men look upon each other doubtful if they shall defend their own, or steal their neighbor's property. Famine stares all England in the face. As for the theatres, they are not thought of, much less patronized. The emigration to America willbe very numerous, as it is hardly possible for the middling classes to keep body and soul together. 7 Joining the exodus to America, William Chapman, Sr., William B., Samuel, and George worked for two seasons at the Bowery and Park Theaters in New York. William B. quickly became the favorite comedian at the Bowery, but he and Samuel soon left New York for Philadelphia, where they became joint managers of the Walnut Street Theater. In 1829 Samuel married Elizabeth Jefferson, sister of Joseph Jefferson II,but died a few months later when a suit of armor he wore in a show infected a wound he had sustained in a fall from his horse. The Chapmans acted in various theaters around the country, but

5 George D. Ford, These Were Actors (New York, 1955), 85-91. Sol Smith, in Theatrical Apprenticeship and Anecdotical Recollections (Philadelphia, 1846), 62, tells of a similar but less exciting escape from some constables in Pittsburgh and may have stirred Ford's imagination. 6 Constance Rourke, The Roots of American Culture (1942; reprint ed., Port Washington, N.Y. :Kennikat Press, Inc., 1965), 139. 7 Quoted in Philip Graham, Showboats (Austin, Texas, 1951), 10. 1976 HISTORICAL SOCIETY NOTES AND DOCUMENTS 233 in the early summer of 1831 they gathered together at the Red Lion Hotel on St. Clair Street in Pittsburgh. Itis easy to gain the im- pression that the Chapmans just happened to arrive in Pittsburgh and that the idea of a family showboat came up quite casually. The smoky city, however, was not known for its theatrical enthusiasm. Both Noah Ludlow and Sol Smith, on separate occasions, had discovered this only a few years earlier. 8 "Relatively handsome theaters were already fairly common in the middle states shortly after the Revolution." 9 But Pittsburgh, in1831, stillhad only one "unimposing" frame playhouse, and by the time the Chapmans arrived it had been converted into a machine shop. 10 Two years later Francis Wemyss opened —"what may justly be termed the model theatre of the United States elegance and comfort being combined, both for the auditor and actor." n Wemyss, ever the optimist, looked forward to a long and successful career inPittsburgh, but he soon discovered that his audiences were extremely difficult to please and that business was seldom up to expectations. 12 The Chapmans, however, were in Pittsburgh for a different rea- son. They were no doubt aware of several factors which, at first glance, seem unconnected withthe stage. First of all, in the years just before the Chapmans' arrival Pittsburgh's population nearly doubled from 7,500 in 1820 to 13,000 in 1830. 13 This was due to the city's position at the headwaters of the Ohio which made it the "Gateway to the West" and the leading riverboat construction center in the country.14 Second, after many years of Indian wars and other frontier strug- gles, the west (the midwest of today) was at last becoming—civilized. Between 1816 and 1821 six new states entered the Union five of them from the west. Andrew Jackson's election to the presidency em- phasized the growing importance of this new section of the country and the common, democratic men who lived there. Third, American culture, after years of dependence on Europe, was at last bearing fruit of its own. The newly developed and pacified west was anxious to share in the American artistic flowering. 8 Ludlow, Dramatic Life, 51-76; Smith, Apprenticeship, 62-64. 9 Brooks McNamara, The American Playhouse in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 72. 10 Walter Havighurst, River to the West (New York, 1970), 264. 11 Francis Courtney Wemyss, Twenty-Six Years of the Life of an Actor and Manager, 2 vols. (New York, 1847), 2: 216. 12 Ibid., 224-25. 13 James T. Lloyd,Lloyd's Steamboat Directory (Cincinnati, 1856), 53. 14 Ethel C. Leahy, Who's Who on the Ohio River (Cincinnati, 1931), 381. 234 HISTORICAL SOCIETY NOTES AND DOCUMENTS APRIL

Fourth, the 1820s had ushered in a new age of transportation. Turnpikes, canals, steamboats, and flatboats allowed goods, information, and people to travel from one part of the country to another faster than ever before. — Finally, at the end of the long river highway more than two thousand miles from Pittsburgh — was New Orleans, the fastest growing city in the country. The British Quarterly Review predicted that New Orleans would become, because of the Mississippi, "the most important commercial city in America, if not the world." 15 Deboit/s Review, an eminent statistical and economic periodical, said that "no city of the world has ever advanced as a mart of commerce with such gigantic and rapid strides as New Orleans." 16 It was soon to become the fourth largest city in the United States and the third commercial port in the world,behind only London and Liverpool. In short, the entire Ohio-Mississippi valley was a young, eager, and energetic giant, and its residents were increasingly aware of culture and hungry for entertainment after years of lonely pioneering. William Chapman, Sr., was known to be a man who was alert and widely read. 17 Itseems logical that he would have been aware of these social and economic conditions, and that they (more than an interest in angling) led him and his family to launch the Floating Theater in the summer of 1831. It seems possible, too, that Chapman might have learned that in 1827 a massive government program had commenced removing thousands of snags from the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Losses on the two rivers, from snags alone, between 1822 and 1827 had amounted to $1,362,500. Once the clearing program began, losses were cut drastically, until in 1832, "in consequence of the successful working of the snag boats, not a single boat was lost." 18 Additional proof of expanding river traffic was the digging of new channels for the Mississippi in some places, cutting off meandering bends, and decreas- ing the overall distance from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. 19 New York and Philadelphia had more theaters than they could support. Smaller cities, like Pittsburgh, could not sustain permanent acting companies. Hundreds of tiny but bustling river towns, however, thirsted for entertainment, and a newly cleared river opened to their 15 Quoted in E. W. Gould, Fifty Years on the Mississippi (1889; reprint ed, Columbus, Ohio :Long's College Book Co., 1951), 217. 16 Ibid. 17 Rourke, Roots, 139. 18 Gould, Fifty Years, 213. 19 Pittsburgh Gazette, July 26, 1831. 1976 HISTORICAL SOCIETY NOTES AND DOCUMENTS 235 front doors. An ambitious and observant actor could surely spot the opportunity. Others had no doubt tried some form of showboating before the Chapmans. "There is no record of the first showboat's appearance on the Mississippi. It was probably developed from years of itinerant minstrels, dancers, and mimics giving exhibitions in cabins of arks, flatboats, and keelboats." 20 Noah Ludlow, among others, traveled the rivers with an acting company more than a decade before the Chap- mans, but his troop performed on shore rather than on their boat. The conditions of travel and the lack of prestige drove Ludlow away from his "Noah's Ark." 21 Itremained for the Chapmans to provide the necessary combination of hard work and raw talent to run a prosperous showboat. Yet again and again their achievement is given a simple, romantic interpretation inlines such as the following: Living seemed far more important to this gay and irrepressible family than wealth or professional success. 22 Great profit was not the primary motive of the elder Chapman. 23 One of the motivating factors in this novelty [the showboat], it seems, was the passion which all the Chapmans had for fishing, and it is said that even during a performance, those actors who were not required on stage were watching their lines hang over the stern. 24 The Chapmans were often more intent on fishing than on playing. 25 The idea of a fishing mania which led to a casual attitude towards performing rests to a great extent on a tale originally written down by Sol Smith and repeated by almost everyone who has ever mentioned the Chapmans. The story alleges that during a performance of The Stranger on the Chapman boat, the title character was stranded on stage waiting for a long overdue entrance by a character named Francis. "Francis !Francis !"called the Stranger. No reply. "Francis! Francis!" (a pause.) "Francis!" rather angrily called the Stranger again. — A very distant voice "Coming, sir!" (a considerable pause, during which the Stranger walks up and down, a la Macready, in a great rage.) "Francis !" Francis (entering). Here Iam, sir. Stran. Why did you not come when Icalled?

20 Raymond S. Spears, "The Mississippi Boat Theatres," Harper*s Weekly, Sept. 4, 1909. 21 Graham, Showboats, 7-9. 22 Ibid.,14. 23 James H. Dorman, Jr., Theatre in the Ante-Bellum South, 1815-1861 (Chapel Hill,1967), 112. 24 Glenn Hughes, A History of the American Theatre, 1700-1950 (New York, 1951), 163. 25 Rourke, Roots, 138. 236 HISTORICAL SOCIETY NOTES AND DOCUMENTS APRIL

Francis. Why, sir, Iwas just hauling in one of the d—dest big catfish you ever saw ! It was some minutes before the laughter of the audience could be restrained sufficiently to allow the play to proceed. 26 This story and others of similar flavor have been repeated with great relish and have created Thoreauvian images for all the Chap- mans. Iffishing and family fun was their goal they would have been better off in the east where they had already enjoyed some measure of success. As it was, only hard work and rough living awaited them on the western rivers. But keen business sense told them that excellent profits were waiting also. The smell of cash and not of catfish launched the Floating Theater. Rewards were available but were not won without exertion. The fact that river travel had been improved did not mean it had become easy. The first Chapman showboat was quite different from the large steamboat theaters of the later nineteenth century. It was merely a log flatboat (with a shelter covering a small stage and crude wood- en benches for the audience), designed to sell for firewood or building lumber after floating to New Orleans. 27 Itused the current for loco- motion but required brains and muscle for navigation. Travelers drifting downriver depended on a small book called Zadok Cramer's Navigator — available in Pittsburgh for $1.00 and providing a dependable guide to the river channels. 28 Without the Navigator, disaster at the hands of the river gods was invited. With the famous book the odds of catastrophe were only about one in five. "Going downstream required watchfulness and some ingenuity and a fullknowledge of the fitfulness of the navigable currents." 29 Upstream was far more difficult,and it seems the Chapmans moved upriver on the Green, the Arkansas, and other tributaries insearch of audiences. 30 Going upstream on a flatboat required poling, bushwhacking, towing, rowing, and warping (sending a coil of rope forward to a tree on shore or a snag in the water, toward which all hands on board pulled the boat). "Itwas pole and warp and tow and row, and row and tow, and pole and warp." 31 Furthermore, the entire cast, men and women, had to work vigorously to bring the boat to shore whether moving upstream or down. 26 Sol Smith, Theatrical Management in the West and South for Thirty Years (New York, 1868), 89. 27 Tyrone Power, Impressions of America, 2 vols. (London, 1836), 2 208-9. 28 Leahy, Who's Who, 66. 29 Gould, Fifty Years, 29. 30 Graham, Showboats, 15. 31 Gould, Fifty Years, 29. 1976 HISTORICAL SOCIETY NOTES AND DOCUMENTS 237

Transportation efforts made up only a fraction of the Chapman activities. Their day began at 3:00 a.m. Rising early to arrive at the next destination by noon, they still faced a fullafternoon and evening of work. Once the Floating Theater was docked : William, Jr. and George went ashore to advertise the performance. A —"town crier" was employed to walk through the streets, blowing a trumpet the calliope had not been invented — and announcing the play and a free concert. Circulars prepared by Phoebe Chapman [William, Jr.'s wife] were tacked on trees or at prominent corners in the village. These were modest announcements of facts, not in the least resembling the extravagantly phrased posters of a later date. The afternoon was devoted to laying in needed supplies at the village store, rehearsing, and fishing. The concert began at 7 :30, the first four numbers from the top deck, the last three from the front of the stage; the curtain was pulled at the ringing of a bell at eight .... The program for an evening's entertainment was likely to consist of a play, followed by a monologue elocution- ized in the manner of the day, sketches and impersonations, and musical numbers and dances. 32 Everything was performed, we recall, by the same few actors and actresses who had been serving as deck hands since 3 :00 a.m. that morning. If this routine does not seem strenuous enough, itmust be remembered that from time to time it was necessary to fight off gangs of river bandits and thugs. 33 It is hard to see why writers aware of a schedule like this one can believe the Chapmans did itall for love of fishing. What was their reward ? After five trips from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, stopping to entertain delighted river folk along the way, scrapping the flatboat at journey's end, and returning to Pittsburgh by stagecoach or steamer (each round trip taking about one year), the Chapmans had saved enough money to buy their own steamboat. Itwas converted into a theater with painted sets and drops, and chairs instead of benches for the audience. In addition, the size of the company jumped from eleven to twenty-one. 34 Perhaps from this point on there was time for some fishing. The financial picture vastly improved as well; the steamer allowed more speed, more stops, more shows, more paying customers. Even during the depression of the late 1830s and early 1840s, which may have brought the most distressing years in the history of the American theater, the Chapman showboat, now called the Floating Palace, did excellent business : — Although 1837—was a panic year banks closed, wharves silent, land offices almost empty the Floating Theater prospered. River people could pay in goods 32 Graham, Showboats, 15-16. 33 Rourke, Roots, 139. 34 Havighurst, River to the West, 266. 238 HISTORICAL SOCIETY NOTES AND DOCUMENTS APRIL if not in money, and a showboat's music made them forget the troubled times. The Chapman troupe offered enough variety — music, drama, farce — to at- tract the crudest settlers along with the more refined. Occasionally they performed Shakespeare, but even with Hamlet they played to the emotions more than to the mind. The first showboat, like all that followed, appealed to the common folk.55 As success continued, the Chapmans were able to trade in their steamboat on bigger and better models at least twice. Some historians even link the family with the huge showboat, Temple oj the Muses, which accommodated more than fifteen hundred customers, boasted a well-stocked bar, and appeared in New York City inFebruary 1845. 36 Philip Graham, however, in his more detailed account, indicates no such connection. 37 By 1847 there were a number of rival showboats on the rivers, and, though the newcomers did not always match the Chapmans in quality of production, the market seemed to have peaked. Sarah Chap- man, manager of the Floating Palace since her husband's death around 1840, sold the boat to Sol Smith and retired with a small fortune. 38 The Chapman children and grandchildren went their separate ways, working in various theaters around the country. Caroline Chapman, the elder, became the most successful member of the family. Noah Ludlow remembers her as : one of the most useful and versatile actresses — such as are seldom met with — good in any character. She could perform any line of business respectably, and in certain characters could not be equalled by any other actress of the day. .. . She got her early training performing in her father's floating theatre on the Western waters, and excellent training it proved to be; she has never been equalled in versatility and finish, in her lines of business by any lady that has appeared upon the stages of America, excepting only Clara Fisher and Mrs. Fitzwilliam. 39 The Chapmans in general were a successful theater family. They launched one of the most distinctive and colorful entertainment tradi- tions in the history of the American theater. We must reaffirm the first of our original four points about them. They were indeed the founders of the showboats. But the other three common beliefs about the Chapmans seem to be in error. Their supposed disdain of money and achievement, their unusually close family ties, and their celebrated passion for fishing have all been grossly overemphasized. A review of a few facts provides clarification : 35 Ibid. 26 Howard Taubman, The Making of the American Theatre (New York, 1965), 78; Hughes, American Theatre, 144. 37 Graham, Showboats, 25-26. 38 Ibid.,20. 39 Ludlow, Dramatic Life, 567, 570. 1976 HISTORICAL SOCIETY NOTES AND DOCUMENTS 239

1. The Chapmans departed England for America in the midst of slack times for the English theater. Had fishing been their chief goal they could have pursued it on the Clyde or the Tweed. 2. Not content to enjoy moderate success in New York and Philadelphia, they came west to Pittsburgh, which was hardly a theatrical center. 3. They recognized, at precisely the right moment, the tre- mendous opportunities provided by the unique social, economic, and geographic factors which existed along the Ohio-Mississippi valley. 4. They had the talent and background to present showboat productions which were the equal of many shows playing in the eastern theaters. Their accomplishments as actors and managers in London, New York, and Philadelphia do not testify to a casual attitude towards their work. There may have been sloppy performances, even chicanery, on later showboats but not on any run by the Chapmans. 5. They worked as a group for logical reasons and were not un- usual among nineteenth-century family businesses. When their profession required it they split up. 6. They enjoyed large financial success and cared a great deal about money. When the opportunities in showboating had been ful- filled for them, they left the rivers and looked for new locations for theatric development. The early 1850s found many of the Chapmans in San Francisco. And we all know what had started in California in 1849.