The contemporaries and successors of the Christys were numerous and
various. The air was full of their music, and dozens of halls in the city
of New York alone echoed the patter of their clogged feet for years. Among
the more famous of them the following may briefly be mentioned: Buckley's
"New Orleans Serenaders" were organized in 1843; they consisted of George
Swayne, Frederick, and R. Bishop Buckley, and were very popular throughout
the country. "White's Serenaders" were at the Melodeon, 53 Bowery, perhaps
as early as 1846, and certainly at White's Athenaeum, 585 Broadway,
opposite the Metropolitan Hotel, as late as 1872. The Harrington Minstrels
were at Palmo's Opera-house in 1847 or 1848. Bryant's Minstrels, as their
old play-bills show, were organized in 1857, when they occupied
Mechanics' Hall; they went to the Tammany Building on Fourteenth Street in
1868, were at 730 Broadway the next year, and opened the hall on
Twenty-third Street near Sixth Avenue in 1870, where they remained until
Dan Bryant, the last of his race, died in 1875. Wood's Minstrels were at
514 Broadway, opposite the St. Nicholas Hotel, in 1862 and later. "Sam"
Sharpley's Minstrels were at 201 Bowery in 1864. "Tony" Pastor's troupe
were in the same building in 1865, where they remained two years; they
were upon the site of the Metropolitan Theatre--later Winter Garden--for a
few seasons, and until they removed to their present cosey home near
Tammany Hall. The San Francisco Minstrels were at 585 Broadway in 1865,
and in 1874 went to the more familiar hall on Broadway, opposite the
Sturtevant House, Budworth's Minstrels opened the Fifth Avenue Hall, where
the Madison Square Theatre now stands, in 1866. Kelly and Leon, who were
on Broadway on the site of Hope Chapel in 1867, where they were credited
with having "Africanized opera bouffe," followed Budworth to the
Twenty-fourth Street house. Besides these were the companies of Morris
Brothers, of Cotton and Murphy and Cotton and Reed, of Hooley, of Haverly,
of Dockstader, of Pelham, of Pierce, of Campbell, of Pell and Trowbridge,
of Thatcher, Primrose and West, of Huntley, and of very many more, to say
nothing of the bands of veritable negroes who have endeavored to imitate
themselves in imitation of their white brethren in all parts of the land.
Brander Matthews, in an article on "Negro Minstrelsy," printed in the
London _Saturday Review_ in 1884, and afterwards published as one of the
chapters of a volume of _Saturday Review_ essays, entitled _The New Book
of Sports_ (London, 1885), describes a "minstrel show" given by the negro
waiters of one of the large summer hotels in Saratoga a few summers
before, in which, "when the curtains were drawn aside, discovering a row
of sable performers, it was perceived, to the great and abiding joy of the
spectators, that the musicians were all of a uniform darkness of hue, and
that they, genuine negroes as they were, had 'blackened up,' the more
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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