These are seven letters Charlotte Thompson wrote to Henry Watterson from Nov. 1865 to April 1867.  Charlotte was know for her portrayal of Jane Eyre throughout the US.  Charlotte discusses how much she expects to make a night, request that Henry Watterson collects her pay, one is written from Memphis in May 1866 during the riots.  When these letters were written Henry Watterson had just ended his time as editor for the Confederate newspapers (The Rebel,  Southern Confederacy), and makes his way back to Nashville to edit the Banner.  Later becomes an owner and Pulitzer winning editor at the Louisville Courier Journal.  Watterson knew many entertainers and was a musical prodigy himself.  These come from a collection of Henry Watterson's personal correspondence.   Henry Watterson is my wife's G-G-Grandfather.  Each letter is signed and dated by Charlotte.  I don't believe all the envelopes are correct for the letters the had in them.  The one is addressed to the Rebel office in Chattanooga,  that would have been earlier than these letters.   These letters are looking for a new home.

This is the Charlotte I have letters from: (from Brown's History of American Stage) " THOMPSON, CHARLOTTE.— Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, Eng., June 7, 1843. She is the daughter of Lysander Thompson, one of the best actors that ever graced the American stage. Her first appearance on any stage was at Wallack's Theatre, New York, during the season of 1856-'57, as Phoebe in " As You Like It." She owns a plantation five miles from Montgomery, Ala., where she spends her time with her mother, when not on professional tours. She has about one thousand five hundred acres, two-thirds of which is devoted to the cultivation of cotton. The cabins of her hired negroes are models of neatness and comfort. Visited California in the Spring of 1869, and played at the New California Theatre, San Francisco. On July n, 1869, she was married to Major Loraine Rogers, director of the New California Theatre, in San Francisco, by Rev. Bishop Kip. Mr. Rogers had formerly travelled with her as business agent."   

If anyone has info on Charlotte's Esperanza plantation outside Montgomery,  Ala. I would appreciate that knowledge. 

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