The Early Life of Edwin Thanhouser

After the Civil War, the Thanhousers moved from Ottawa, Illinois to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Years later, Edwin told his son Lloyd: “Life is just a bubble. I can remember as a boy in Fort Wayne, Indiana I was head of a fife and drum corps, and we used to get paid for not playing in certain blocks!” From Fort Wayne, the family moved west to Kansas.

Garden City, Kansas was a typical frontier town when the Thanhousers lived there in the 1880s. The threat of an attack by Indians seemed real to young Edwin at a time when the saga of General Custer’s demise at his “last stand” in 1876 was fresh in the memory of every schoolboy. Fortunately, no Indians ever threatened the Thanhouser family or anyone else in the Kansas community.

The Thanhousers were comfortably situated in what was considered to be the best residential district of the town. Among the family’s possessions was a pony. Ownership was specifically assigned to young Edwin who fed and cared for it each day.

Among the diversions for the local citizenry were plays, vaudeville acts, and other entertainment at the local opera house. Edwin was a regular attendee at the shows put on by traveling troupes and stock companies. While it is not recorded what plays and performances he observed, it is likely that such stock melodramas as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, East Lynne, and Hazel Kirke were among them, for in a typical American city of the era, scarcely a year went by without their appearance, as well as plays from Shakespeare and other English writers, and routines by acrobats, magicians, orators, and comedians.

By the time he was 28 years of age, Edwin Thanhouser was thoroughly stage struck. At that time, in 1893, his father was appointed United States Consul at Matamoros, Mexico. Edwin, who had accumulated the impressive sum of $5,000 by working diligently and saving much of his earnings, decided the time had come to set off on his own.

Reminiscing years later, in 1951, Edwin Thanhouser noted that his career began with the Kendle Komedy Company, followed by the Louie Lord Company, then the Lizzie Evens Company,¹ and the company of Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske.²

Sometime around 1894, he heard an oration by Alessandro Salvini, a famous Italian actor. Impressed, he joined Salvini’s traveling theatrical company. His $5,000 nest egg, entrusted to his father, was frittered away.

Copyright © 1995 Q. David Bowers. All Rights Reserved.

Footnotes

1. The spellings of the Kendle Komedy Company, the Louie Lord Company, and the Lizzie Evens Company are from Edwin Thanhouser’s handwritten notes, circa 1951. His spelling was often quite erratic, and the correct form of these names may have been different from that given here. ↩

2. Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865-1932) was one of the best-known actresses of the era. She made her stage debut in 1870 and was a familiar figure on the stage for the next two decades. Particularly memorable were her portrayals of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Becky Sharp, and Ibsen characters. In 1890 she married Harrison Grey Fiske, owner of The New York Dramatic Mirror, the prominent stage weekly, after which she left the stage for three years, returning in 1893 in the production of Hester Crewe. For many years thereafter she was among the most famous American stage personalities and was billed as Mrs. Fiske or Mrs. Harrison Fiske. To have worked with Mrs. Fiske was considered an honor, and numerous players included mention of this in their biographies in trade directories. ↩