May Irwin (June 27, 1862 – October 22, 1938) was an actress, singer and star of vaudeville. Originally from Canada, she and her sister Flo Irwin found theater work after their father died. She was known for her performances as a coon shouter and recordings.

Born at Whitby, Ontario in 1862 as Georgina May Campbell,^[1][2][3] her father, Robert E. Campbell, died when she was 13 years old; her stage-minded mother, Sophoria Jane Draper, in need of money, encouraged May and her older sister Adeline Flora ("Flo" or "Addie") to perform. They created a singing act, billed as the "Irwin Sisters," that debuted at the Adelphi Theatre in nearby Buffalo, New York in December 1874. By late 1877, their careers had progressed and they were booked to appear at New York's Metropolitan Theater, then at the Tony Pastor Theatre, a popular New York City music hall.

Miss May Irwin

The sisters proved popular enough to earn regular spots for the ensuing six years, after which 21-year-old May set out on her own. She joined Augustin Daly's stock company from 1883 to 1887, where she made her first appearance on the theatrical stage. This comedian was known for her improvisation skills. An immediate success, she went on to make her London stage debut at Toole's Theatre in August 1884. By the age of 25, she was earning $2,500 a week.^[4] In 1886, her husband of eight years, Frederick W. Keller, died unexpectedly. Her sister Flora married New York State Senator Thomas F. Grady.

By the early 1890s, Irwin had married a second time and developed her career into that of a leading vaudeville performer with an act known at the time as "Coon Shouting", in which she performed African American-influenced songs. In the 1895 Broadway show The Widow Jones, she introduced "The Bully Song", which became her signature number. The performance also featured a lingering kiss, which was seen by Thomas Edison, who hired Irwin and her co-star John C. Rice to repeat the scene on film. In 1896, Edison's Kinetoscope production, The Kiss, became the first screen kiss in cinematic history.^[5]

Her own pieces included " The Widow Jones", " The Swell Miss Fitzswell", "Courted into Court", "Kate Kip-Buyer", and "Sister Mary".^[6]

The cover of sheet music featuring one of Irwin's songs originally performed in the Broadway musical Courted into Court.

In addition to her performing and singing, Irwin also wrote the lyrics to several songs, including "Hot Tamale Alley", with music written by George M. Cohan. In 1907 she married her manager, Kurt Eisfeldt, and began making records for Berliner/Victor. Several of these recordings survive and give a notion of the actress's appeal.

Irwin's buxom figure was much in vogue at the time and, combined with her charming personality, made her one of America's most beloved performers for more than thirty years. In 1914, she made her second silent film appearance, this time in the feature-length adaptation of George V. Hobart's play, Mrs. Black is Back, produced by Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company and filmed for the most part at her own sprawling home in New York. Still pictures showing May survive from this movie.

A highly paid performer, Irwin was a shrewd investor and became a very wealthy woman. She spent a great deal of time at a summer home on secluded Club Island, a small island off of Grindstone Island of the Thousand Islands, and at her winter home on Merritt Island, Florida, before retiring to a farm near Clayton, New York, where a street would eventually be named in her honor.

Personal life

May Irwin was married twice. Her first marriage was to Frederick W. Keller, of St. Louis, from 1878 until his death in 1886. From 1907 to the end of her life, she was married to Kurt Eisfeldt. The couple lived at West 44th Street, New York.

May Irwin had two sons by her first marriage, Walter Keller (born ca. 1879 - when she was 17) and Harry Keller (b. 1882 - when she was 20).^[7]

Death

May Irwin died in New York City on October 22, 1938, aged 76. She is interred at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY.

William Ordway Partridge (April 11, 1861 – May 22, 1930) was an American sculptor whose public commissions can be found in New York City and other locations.

William Partridge was born in Paris to American parents descended from the Pilgrims in Massachusetts; his father was a representative of A.T. Stewart. At the end of the reign of Napoleon III, Partridge travelled to America to attend Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn and Columbia University (graduated 1883) in New York. After a year of experimentation in theatre, he went abroad to study sculpture. During a brief stint in the Paris studio of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, he formed a close friendship with the neo-Gothic architect Ralph Adams Cram on his 1887 trip.^[1] He knew the young Bernard Berenson in Florence, where he studied in the studio of Galli, and Rome, in the studio of Pio Welonski (1883–1885).^[2]

His published work includes articles on aesthetics and several art history books including Art For America (1894), The Song Life of a Sculptor (1894), and The Technique of Sculpture (1895). He also wrote poems and published the verse novels Angel of Clay (1900) and The Czar's Gift (1906).^[3]

Aside from his public commissions, his work consisted mostly of portrait busts. In 1893 eleven of his works were displayed at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, according to the official catalog of the Fine Arts Building at the fair, where he exhibited sculptures of Alexander Hamilton and William Shakespeare^[4] as well as portraits. In this same catalog Partridge was listed as living in Milton, Massachusetts. He maintained homes and studios in both Milton and New York. Among his studio assistants on West 38th Street in New York was Lee Lawrie.

Partridge went on to lecture at Stanford University in California, and assumed a professorship at Columbian University, now George Washington University, in Washington, D.C.

His life-size statue of the Native American princess Pocahontas was unveiled in Jamestown, Virginia in 1922. Queen Elizabeth II viewed this statue in 1957 and again on May 4, 2007, while visiting Jamestown on the 400th anniversary of the founding of the first successful English colonial settlement in America. On October 5, 1958, a replica of the Pocahontas statue by Partridge was dedicated as a memorial to the princess at the location of her burial in 1617 at St. George's Church in Gravesend, England. The Governor of Virginia presented the replica statue as a gift to the British people.

Partridge died in Manhattan, New York on May 22, 1930.