Maryland Historical Magazine, 1977, Volume 72, Issue No. 3
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Published Quarterly by the Maryland Historical Society FALL 1977 Vol. 72, No. 3 BOARD OF EDITORS JOSEPH L. ARNOLD, University of Maryland, Baltimore County JEAN BAKER, Goucher College GARY BROWNE, University of Maryland, Baltimore County GEORGE H. CALLCOTT, University of Maryland, College Park JOSEPH W. COX, Towson State University CURTIS CARROLL DAVIS, Baltimore RICHARD R. DUNCAN, Georgetown University RONALD HOFFMAN, University of Maryland, College Park EDWARD C. PAPENFUSE, Hall of Records BENJAMIN QUARLES, Morgan State University JOHN B. BOLES, Editor, Rice University NANCY G. BOLES, Assistant Editor RICHARD J. COX, Manuscripts MARY K. MEYER, Genealogy MARY KATHLEEN THOMSEN, Graphics FORMER EDITORS WILLIAM HAND BROWNE, 1906-1909 LOUIS H. DIELMAN, 1910-1937 JAMES W. FOSTER, 1938-1949, 1950-1951 HARRY AMMON, 1950 FRED SHELLEY, 1951-1955 FRANCIS C. HABER, 1955-1958 RICHARD WALSH, 1958-1967 RICHARD R. DUNCAN, 1967-1974 P. WILLIAM FILBY, Director ROMAINE S. SOMERVILLE,.4mrtam Director-Curator of the Galley WALTER J. SKAYHAN, III, Assistant Director-Administration The Maryland Historical Magazine is published quarterly by the Maryland Historical Society, 201 W. Monument Street, Baltimore. Maryland 21201. Contributions and correspondence relating to articles, book reviews, and any other editorial matters should be addressed to the Editor in care of the Society. All contributions should be submitted in duplicate, double-spaced, and consistent with the form out- lined in A Manual of Style (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). The Maryland Historical Society disclaims responsibility for statements made by contributors. Composed and printed at Waverly Press, Inc., Baltimore, Maryland 21202. Second-class postage paid at Baltimore, Maryland. ® 1977, Maryland Historical Society. /v^ SO^SM - w MALL Ul" KtUUKUS LlbKAKY ©OLIS, MARYLAND HISTORICAL Vol. 72 No. 3 Fall 1977 CONTENTS Kathryn Painter Ward The Maryland Theatrical Season of 1760 335 John W. McGrain The Development and Decline of Dorseys Forge .... 346 Lemuel Molovinsky Maryland and the American West at Independence .. 353 Maury Baker Cost Overrun, An Early Naval Precedent: Building the First U.S. Warships, 1794-98 361 William L. Calderhead A Strange Career in a Young Navy: Captain Charles Goordon, 1778-1816 373 Chester Gray Dunham A Nineteenth Century Baltimore Diplomat: Chris- topher Hughes Goes to Sweden 387 Kenneth C. Haley A Nineteenth Century Portraitist and More: James Alexander Simpson 401 Sidelights Basil Crapster 'In the Finest Can trey': A Baltimore Cooper at the End of the Revolution 413 M. Sammy Miller Patty Cannon: Murderer and Kidnapper of Free Blacks. A Review of the Evidence 419 Reviews of Recent Books Van Home, ed., The Correspondence of William Nelson as Acting Governor of Virginia, 1770-1771, by Albert E. Van Dusen 'Jensen, ed.. The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, vols. I and II, by James S. Van Ness • Jensen, ed., The Documentary History of the First Federal Elec- tion, 1788-1790, vol. I, by Nicholas Varga • Snyder, The Lady and the President: The Letters of Dorothea Dix and Millard Fillmore, by Cynthia H. Requardt • Bloomfield, American Lawyers in a Changing Society, 1776-1876, by Charles T. Cullen • 424 Book Notes 432 Notes and Queries 435 The Maryland Theatrical Season of 1760 KATHRYN PAINTER WARD o,'N FKBRUARY 7, 1760, THE MARYLAND GAZETTE ANNOUNCED THE IMMINENT Annapolis debut of the distinguished theatrical troupe that came to dominate the colonial stage: "By permission of his excellency the Governor, a theatre is erecting in this city which will be opened soon by a Company of Comedians, who are now at Chestertown."1 Managed by David Douglass, they had left Jamaica not long before advertised as the Company of Comedians from London. But the parent company, of which these actors were nominal descendants and, in part, direct heirs, was not new to the colonies; they had sailed from London in the spring of 1752, sponsored by William Hallam, proprietor of a theater in Goodman's Fields, London, and managed by his brother Lewis. The financial arrangements of the enterprise differed little from those custom- ary in Shakespeare's England. The profits would be divided into eighteen shares: each of the twelve adult players would receive one share, and in addition Lewis would have an extra share for his three children (Lewis, Jr., Adam, and Helen) and an extra share as manager. The remaining four shares were as- signed for the property and paid to William and Lewis Hallam. William would earn his portion by recruiting in London when there was need for scripts or actors.2 Dunlap paints a lively picture of the shipboard rehearsals on the Charming Sally as the players strove to perfect their lines above the competition of the inattentive ocean, but these well-drilled actors did not come into Maryland during their first essays in the colonies. Arriving in Yorktown in June 1752, they went at once to Williamsburg where Governor Dinwiddie gave them permission to fit out a theater, which they opened in September. The following summer they were in New York, where, in spite of local religious objectors, they received permission for a limited stay; in the winter of 1753 they attacked the Quaker stronghold of Philadelphia.3 Again they met religious opposition, now so strong that, discouraged in the North, they moved south to Charleston, opening in October and continuing with weekly performances until January 1755,4 when Dr. Kathryn Painter Ward is an associate professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park. 1. Beyond the announcement in the February Gazette there is no record that the company was in Chestertown before they came to Annapolis. 2. William Dunlap, History of the American Theatre (New York, 1832), pp. 104-5, lists the members of the Company as Lewis Hallam, manager and actor; Mrs. Hallam, principal female roles in both tragedy and comedy; Mr. Righby, tragic heroes; Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson, "useful"; Miss Palmer; Mr. Singleton; Mr. Herbert; Mr. Winell (or Wynel); Mrs. Adcock; Mr. Malone. 3. Examples of letters opposing the theater may be found in the Pennsylvania Gazette, March 9 and 26, 1754. 4. Eola Willa, The Charleston Stage in the XVIII Century (New York, reprint ed., 1968), p. 42. 335 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE VOL. 72, No. 3, FALL 1977 336 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE they moved to Jamaica.5 There the gay and merry life of the Islands had already proved receptive to the theater, notably to the pioneer John Moody, whose company was now playing under the management of David Douglass. Shortly after reaching Jamaica, Lewis Hallam died, and a year or two later, his widow married Douglass, a printer who turned trouper in order to join the company gathered by Moody for the Jamaica stage in 1751. As William Dunlap saw it, "Mrs. Hallam married David Douglass and placed him on the theatrical throne of the western hemisphere."6 But Douglass was a competent leader in his own right. Educated in Scotland or England, he had served as a printer in Jamaica before he joined Moody. The infrequency of his appearance in major roles suggests that his acting ability was not of the first order, but his was the hand that guided the helm of theatrical entertainment in the American colonies until the Revolutionary War forced his retirement. An enterprising manager and builder of playhouses, he won the respect of colonial governors through both diplomacy and tireless determination.7 Douglass organized a company in Jamaica with his wife and her two sons, Lewis, Jr., and Adam Hallam, probably the sole survivors of Lewis Hallam's troupe that had reached Kingston more than three years earlier. Helen Hallam, Lewis's third child, was no longer with the family. In the new company, Mrs. Douglass played leading female roles in tragedy and comedy with equal acclaim; her son Lewis, barely twenty years old, was leading man. Dunlap describes him as "of middle height or above, thin, straight, and well taught as a dancer and fencer. In learning the latter accomplishment he had received a hurt in the corner of one of his eyes which gave a slight cast, a scarcely perceptible but odd expression to it in some points of view; generally his face was well adapted to his profession, particularly in comedy."8 With Lewis was his wife Sarah, whom he had married in Jamaica. Adam Hallam, his younger brother, seems from the roles he was assigned to have had little acting talent. Perhaps he served as property-man, prompter, or general advance man for the company. Besides Douglass, two other members of Moody's Jamaica troupe joined the new company: Owen Morris and his wife. Both were competent players. Morris was best known for his comic-old-men parts, and his jests and buffoonery later made him the darling of audiences from New York to Charleston. 5. The travels of Lewis Hallam's company in the colonies is variously traced by regional and general historians of the early American theater. There is no full-length regional history of the early Maryland theater. For the latest general account, see Hugh F. Rankin, The Theatre in Colonial America (Chapel Hill, 1960, 1965), pp. 43-83. For the Hallams' theatrical activities in Jamaica, see Richardson Wright, Revels in Jamaica, 1632-1838 (New York, 1937), pp. 2, 26. 6. Dxmlap, History of the American Theatre, p. 18. 7. Douglass returned to Jamaica in 1774, after the Continental Congress passed a resolution intended to "discourage and discountenance . exhibitions, shews, plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments." He was appointed Master of the Revels in Jamaica, an office that gave him authority over all performances and direction of all balls and entertainments. He also held the office of King's Printer for Jamaica and its dependencies as well as many other offices of trust and honor.