Cornelius Ambrosius Logan (May 4, 1806 – February 23, 1853) was an American actor, playwright, and journalist who was father to a famous family of actresses and writers.
Biography Born in Baltimore to Irish immigrant parents,The Mimic World, Olive Logan, New World Publishing, Philadelphia, 1871, pp. 15–6 Logan was educated for the Catholic priesthood at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, but then entered a shipping house, where his work led him to travel to Europe several times. He next became a journalist, and after working as a drama critic began to write plays and act himself. A series of stories starring the cloaked crime-fighter and supporter of the working man "Night Hawk", published in the Philadelphia labor union newspaper Mechanic's Free Press from 1828 to 1830, helped make his reputation.https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo271055968.html Description of "Night Hawk A Nineteenth-Century Superhero and the Dawn of American Mass Culture" (2026) by Matthew Warner Osborn on University of Chicago Press website He moved to Cincinnati with his growing family in 1840 where he operated the "National Theater". He later operated theaters in other cities and traveled with his oldest daughter Eliza, playing comic "yankee" roles. He also wrote short stories, poetry, notably a well-regarded Ode to the Mississippi, and a defence of the theater against criticism from the pulpit.The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, eds. Rossiter Johnson and John Howard Brown, Volume VII, Boston, 1904, The Biographical Society, entry "Cornelius Ambrosius Logan"
He died onboard the steamer Pittsburg on the Ohio River between Marietta, Ohio and Wheeling, Virginia on February 23, 1853.
Family Logan was married in 1825 to Eliza Acheley, and their children were: Eliza (1827–1872), a successful actress; Thomas (1829–1906), a prominent Cincinnati lawyer;Ohio Law Reporter, Volume 4, 1907, obituary, p. 578 Cornelius Ambrose (1832–1899), a physician, writer, and diplomat; Celia (1837–1904), an actress, journalist, translator, and novelist; Olive (1839–1909), an actress and writer and lecturer on the theater; and younger sisters Alice, Grace, and Kate, all of whom appeared on the stage for a time. Kate (1847-1872) was adopted by politician and Civil War hero John A. Logan, a distant cousin, probably in 1866.Reminiscences of a Soldier's Wife, Mrs. John A. Logan, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913, p. 211
Alice (1844-1917) suffered a mental breakdown on the day of her marriage to actor and writer Albert W. Aiken in 1871; she died many years later in a Norristown, Pennsylvania insane asylum.South-eastern Independent, November 17, 1871, "Insanity of an Actress", p. 4 Olive also died in an asylum, in England, although she only became incapacitated in the last years of her life.New York Times, May 1, 1909, "Olive Logan Left Effects to Friends"
Theatrical works Yankee Land, or The Foundling of the Apple Orchard (1834) (popularly performed in by Dan Marble)(July 1879). The American on the Stage, Scribner's Monthly, pp. 324-35. The Wag of Maine (1835) The Vermont Wool Dealer (1840?) (also performed in by Marble) Removing the Deposits Astarte The Celestial Empire; Or, The Yankee in China (1846) Chloroform, or New York a Hundred Years Hence (1849)
References