Family Tree History & Research
Deitz Family History
Cushman Family Line
Charlotte Saunders Cushman
5th Cousin
Stage Actress 19th Century
I came across an article today in the New England Historical Society Email Newsletter about Charlotte.
I remember seeing her name in my family tree on the Cushman side somewhere.
I did a little climbing of the branches and came upon our relation to each other.
Another of my New England kin from my mother's family tree.
Charlotte led a very interesting life and by all accounts was very famous in her time.
Read on for her story (taken from the article from the NEHS email newsletter and a few other sources) and a few tidbits from yours truly.......
Introduction
Charlotte Saunders Cushion (July 23, 1816 – February 18, 1876) was an American stage actress. Her voice was noted for its full contralto register, and she was able to play both male and female parts. She lived intermittently in Rome, in an expatriate colony of prominent artists and sculptors, some of whom became part of her tempestuous private life.
Birth: July 23, 1816
Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States
Death: February 18, 1876 (59)
Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States (breast cancer, Pneumonia)
Immediate Family:
Daughter of Elkanah Cushman, IV and Mary Eliza Cushman
Wife of nn Cushman
Ex-wife of Rosalie Kemble Sully
Partner of Emma Stebbins
Mother of Edwin Charles "Ned" Cushman
Sister of Charles Lathrop Augustus Cushman and Susan Muspratt
My Line to Charlotte Cushman
Charlotte Saunders Cushman is your fifth cousin 6 times removed.
You
→ Marlene Grace Repinski
your mother → Raymond Harold Dietz
her father → Grace Elizabeth Dietz
his mother → Henry Allen Pope
her father → Thomas Paschal Pope
his father → Thomas Faunce Pope
his father → Mitchell Pope
his father → Elnathan Pope, Jr.
his father → Rebecca Pope
his mother → Rebecca Mitchell (Cushman)
her mother → Rev. Isaac Cushman, Sr.
her father → Rev. Elkanah Cushman
his brother → Elkanah "Elkney" Cushman
his son → Elkanah Cushman
his son → Elkanah Cushman, III
his son → Elkanah Cushman, IV
his son → Charlotte Saunders Cushman
his daughter
The Life of Charlotte Cushion
Charlotte Cushman was born in Boston July 23, 1816, to Mary Saunders Cushman and Elkanah Cushman, a descendant of Robert Cushman, one of the first Pilgrims.
Robert Cushman was my 11th Great Grandfather and Charlotte's 6th Great Grandfather. She descends from Robert's grandson Elkanah and I descend from Robert's grandson Isaac.
Her father, Elkanah, was a poor boy from Plymouth who walked to Boston to make his fortune and was a trader in the West Indies for many years amassing a great fortune.
Cushman was forced to take on serious responsibilities at a very young age. When she was thirteen, her father was beset by serious financial troubles and shortly thereafter died, leaving his family with nearly nothing.
This caused Charlotte to seek some way to bring income to her family. Although she was an outstanding student and achieved much academically, she left school to pursue a career in the opera.
When Mrs. Joseph Wood visited Boston in 1834, Capt. Mackay introduced Cushman, who sang with her in two of her concerts.
Through Mrs. Wood's influence she became a pupil of James G. Maeder, a ladies' musical director, and under his instruction made her first appearance in opera in the Tremont Theatre as the Countess Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro, with great success, and her second as Lucy Bertram in Guy Mannering.
She went with his company to New Orleans, where her voice, which had been strained by the soprano parts assigned to her, suddenly failed. Seeking the counsel of James H. Caldwell, manager of the principal theatre of New Orleans, she was advised by him and by Barton, the tragedian, to become an actress and was given the part of Lady Macbeth to study.
She made her dramatic debut in it, with complete success, in 1835.
Charlotte Cushman was not exactly a beauty by any standard and at five feet six inches, she was tall for a woman of her day. She often towered over the men who played opposite her, but she was such a skilled actress, the audience didn’t seem to notice.
The two big things Charlotte Cushman had was a commanding presence and a remarkable contralto voice.
She took music lessons from two of her father’s friends and left school to pursue a career in opera. In the spring of 1835 she made her professional stage debut as The Countess Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro at the Tremont Theater in Boston. She was 18 and on her way.
Her success in Boston led to a seasonal engagement in New Orleans, where her voice suddenly failed. She had ruined her contralto with parts too high for her natural range. The theater manager advised her to take up acting. She quickly learned the part of Lady MacBeth and played it to great success in New Orleans and then New York.
ROMEO AND JULIET
By 1839 her younger sister Susan had started an acting career.
Susan at 14 had married Ned Merriman, a friend of her father’s old enough to be her grandfather. Merriman promised to leave her his fortune, but when Susan became pregnant he fled her and his creditors.
Charlotte took care of Susan and her son Ned, eventually adopting him.
Onstage the sisters became famous: Charlotte played Romeo to Susan’s Juliet.
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| Charlotte and Susan in Romeo & Juliet |
Lovers, Lovers and More Lovers
By 1843, Charlotte Cushman had an offstage lover, Rosalie Sully, the daughter of artist Thomas Sully.
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| Rosalie Sully |
In 1843, Cushman hired the famous artist Thomas Sully to paint her portrait. The portrait (at the top of this post) is so flattering that it's unrecognizable!
The two became such good friends that Cushman was soon considered part of the Sully family. Sully’s beautiful young daughter, Rosalie, became extremely close with Charlotte Cushman. The two young women were soon spending all of their free time together and writing passionate letters when they were apart. In July of 1844 Cushman gave Rosalie a ring and then cryptically noted in her diary: “‘R Saturday, July 6, ‘Married.’ “
Charlotte decided to try her hand at acting in London in the middle part of the 1840s and went abroad without Rosalie.
They made plans to reunite after Cushman’s return from her London engagements, but the tour was so successful that it last for years.
Cushman eventually met Matilda Hays, an English writer, journalist and part-time actress and when word got back to Rosalie she was beyond despair.
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| Matilda Hayes |
Not long after the break up, the heartbroken Rosalie died of a fever, some say due to her weakened emotional state.
When news of Rosalie’s death reached Cushman in London she suffered a mental collapse and her shows were canceled so she could visit a spa to take the “rest cure.”
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| Charlotte in mourning for Rosalie |
For the next 10 years, Charlotte and Matilda maintained a tempestuous relationship. They dressed alike and were publicly recognized as a couple. Elizabeth Barrett Browning called it a ‘female marriage.’
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| Early advertisement in the local newspapers of the time for Charlotte |
HAREM SCAREM
In 1844, Charlotte Cushman returned to the American stage, where she commanded top dollar for her performances. In 1852 she decided to retire from the theater, not for the last time, and moved to Rome.
There she set up a household of ‘jolly bachelor woman’ including Hays, sculptor Harriet Hosmer and writer Grace Greenwood.
The History Project’s 1996 Public Faces, Private Lives exhibit described it as ‘a group of highly mobile, independent women [who] began enjoying an international transatlantic lifestyle that now seems strikingly modern. These women were respected members of the art world, earned large incomes, and kept company with the intellectual and moneyed elites of the time.’
William Wetmore Story called it ‘a Harem (Scarem) of emancipated females.’ Henry James called it a ‘The White Marmorean Flock.’
Charlotte Cushman used her fame and money to promote the work of her women artist friends, including the African-American sculptor Edmonia Lewis and Emma Stebbins, with whom she grew attached romantically.
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| Emma Stebbins |
A jealous Hays suspected Cushman’s relationship with Stebbins and attacked her in a rage. Hays claimed she had given up her career for Cushman and sued her in an early palimony case. Cushman paid her off with an undisclosed amount of money.
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| Cuhsman and Hayes |
RETURN TO THE US
She was friends with artists, writers and politicians; when she came to Washington, D.C. in the 1860s, she often stayed at the home of Secretary of State William Seward, with whom she was very close friends. In July 1861, Seward introduced her to President Lincoln, who told her that Macbeth was his favorite Shakespearean play and that he hoped someday to see her in the role of Lady Macbeth. In 1863 she again returned to the United States, appearing on several occasions for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission. Lincoln saw her perform in Macbeth in October at Grover's Theatre with his family.
Charlotte Cushman moved in with Emma Stebbins and they lived together until she died.
In 1858, Cushman embarked on a tour of America, where she was billed as the universally acknowledged ‘greatest living tragic actress.’
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Poster advertising Cushman's appearance as Hamlet in February, 1861.
On that tour she fell in love with Emma Crow, an 18-year-old actress, while on tour in America. She called Emma Crow her ‘little lover,’ and brought her back to Italy. There Crow met Cushman’s adopted son Ned, who found her attractive.
Cushman encouraged the relationship and the two married in April 1861.
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| Emma Crow and Charlotte |
Charlotte Cushman was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1869, and in 1871 decided to return to the United States.
She built an elaborate mansion in Newport, R.I. During the last six years of her life she gave dramatic readings from Shakespeare, ballad poetry, dialect poems and humorous pieces with a success not less decided than her earlier dramatic triumphs.
In 1871, after a residence in Europe, she resumed her career in the United States as a reader, besides fulfilling several dramatic engagements.
Her farewell appearance was announced at least seven times in as many different years. Her final performance in New York was at Booth's theatre, where she played the part of Lady Macbeth. She took a similar demonstrative farewell in the same character in Philadelphia and other cities and her career closed in Boston, at the Globe Theatre, on 15 May 1875.
After a reading tour to Rochester, Buffalo, and Syracuse, she retired with a large fortune to her villa at Newport, where she was seized with her final illness. In October she went to Boston and placed herself under medical treatment.
A year before she died, she went to Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., to pick out her gravesite. She looked at a number of lots and tombs in prominent positions throughout the cemetery. Finally, she said, "Haven't you a lot for sale where one could obtain an unobstructed view of Boston?"
She then found just the thing near the highest point in the cemetery. It had a sweeping view of Boston and the widest part of the Charles River. She liked it so much she brought a group of friends to visit it.
Charlotte Cushman died of pneumonia in her hotel room at the Parker House in Boston on Feb. 18, 1876.
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| Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA |
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| sculpture of Charlotte by Emma Stebbins |
Legacy
She made England her home for several years, becoming friends with the author Geraldine Jewsbury, who is said to have based a character on Cushman in her 1848 novel The Half Sisters. There is a one-woman play about her titled, "The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman" written by Carolyn Gage.
In 1907, the Charlotte Cushman Club was founded and named in her honor.
In 1915 she was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans.
In 2000, it became the Charlotte Cushman Foundation.
Her Charlestown home is a site on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
Sources:
http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/charlotte-cushman-cross-dressing-tragedienne-of-the-19th-century
When Romeo Was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and Her Circle of Female Spectators By Lisa Merrill.
https://www.geni.com/people/Charlotte-Cushman/6000000018481307242
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Cushman#Stage.2Ftheater_career
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