George Kunkel (theatre manager)

George Kunkel was born in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, on January 21, 1823. The son of Jacob Kunkel and Rebecca Kunkel (née Stine), he initially trained as a printer in the city of Philadelphia. In 1844 he abandoned his career as a printer in Philadelphia to join the company of the Virginia Serenaders; a minstrel show that was then in residence at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. He continued to perform with this troupe until it disbanded in the early 1850s. The troupe contained several well-known blackface entertainers of the period, among them Cool White, Jim Sanford, Tony Winnemore, and Eph Horn. ==Kunkel's Nightingales==

In 1853 Kunkel founded his own traveling minstrel show, Kunkel's Nightingale Serenaders; a troupe sometimes also billed as Kunkel's Nightingale Opera Troupe and Kunkel's Ethiopian Nightingales. This group became one of the leading minstrel shows on the American stage during the mid-1850s. It temporarily disbanded in 1856, but was reformed as Kunkel's Nightingales in 1861 when it resumed performances. The revived troupe began performing at the Baltimore Museum Theatre where Kunkel had taken a post as manager a few months after the beginning of the American Civil War. He also wrote many of his own songs as well as music for other minstrel entertainers. One of his more successful tunes was the 1853 hit "Maryland, My Home". ==Theatre management with Ford and Moxley==

In 1855 Kunkel joined with John T. Ford and Thomas L. Moxley to form a theatre management firm. The trio jointly managed multiple theaters in Baltimore, Richmond, and Washington, D.C. This included the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., which they managed in the mid-1850s until its destruction by fire In recalling the fire in an 1884 interview, Kunkel referred to the National as the Jenny Lind Theatre. Soprano Jenny Lind sang at the grand re-opening of the National Theatre in 1850 after the National's earlier structure had also been destroyed by fire earlier that year. In 1856 the team of Kunkel, Ford, and Moxley (died 1890) took over as managers of the Richmond Theatre (then known as the Marshall Theatre) in Virginia; the leading performance venue in that city. Ford exited the partnership a few years later, but Kunkel and Moxley continued as managers of the theatre until the spring of 1861 with the outbreak of the American Civil War. Unfamiliar with staging serious dramas such as the plays of William Shakespeare, Kunkel and his partners hired the actor Joseph Jefferson to be their stage manager to assist them in doing a credible job with legitimate theatre. They hired several prominent actors of the period to star in productions, among them actress Charlotte Cushman and actors Edwin Forrest, John Drew, and brothers Edwin and John Wilkes Booth. John Wilkes Booth, who later assassinated U.S. president Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theatre (established and managed by the aforementioned John T. Ford), joined the permanent company of players at the Marshall Theatre in 1858 while Kunkel and Moxley were in charge. He remained there for two years, and had a particular success at the theatre as Shakespeare's Richard III. His older brother Edwin had been performing on the Richmond stage since 1856; often playing the title roles in tragedies like King Lear and Henry V. Together, the Booth brothers starred in several Shakespeare plays at the Marshall Theatre during Kunkel's tenure, among them Hamlet with Edwin in the title role and John Wilkes as Horatio. ==Later life and career==

In 1864 Kunkel married the actress Ada Proctor who was one of the stars in Kunkel's Nightingale at the Front Street Theatre in Baltimore. The couple had two children, George Kunkel Jr. and Mamie Kunkel. By the time of his marriage, Kunkel had achieved fame in the role of Uncle Tom based on the character from Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''. He first performed this role with Kunkel's Nightingale while they were on tour to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1861, the year the American Civil War began. He subsequently toured throughout the United States in the part. He became closely associated with the role both on the national stage in the United States and also in England; performing the part on a tour to the latter nation in 1883. He died in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 25, 1885, A benefit performance to raise money to support the Kunkel family was given at Ford's Grand Opera House by the McCaull Comic Opera Company in conjunction with the theatre troupes of the Holliday Street Theater, the Monumental Theatre, and the Front Street Theatre. ==Selected works==

Songs • "Ole Clem: A Celebrated Ethiopian Song" (1848), dedicated to Joseph Reed Esq. of the U.S. Coast survey • "Maryland, My Home" (1853) • "Let Me Kiss Him for his Mother" (1859) about Yellow Fever? • "Only Waiting" (1860) Other • "Kunkel's New Song Book; With Sketches of the Lives of the Principal Members of the Troupe, an Article on Ethiopian Minstrelsy, and All the New and Beautiful Songs Sung by the Nightingales · Issue 4" ==See also==