Note I — AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF MRS. JOHN DREW WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HER SON

Charlotte Saunders Cushman, descendant of the Puritan Cushmans of Mayflower days, fought down the ill-success attending her first essay in opera, and after years of struggling as a poorly paid stock actress at the Bowery and Park Theatres, by sheer merit rose to the position of the Queen of Tragedy, and maintained it for twenty years. From 1845 to 1849, and again from 1852 to 1857, she was so recognized in England and divided the applause with Macready at the Princess's Theatre in London on her first visit. Her forcible and almost masculine manner and face prevented success in comedy, but made her Meg Merrilies, Nancy Sykes, and Helen McGregor, as well as Lady Macbeth, Alicia, Queen Catherine, and Bianca world renowned. In heavy tragedy and melodrama no one has filled her place. She was acceptable as Romeo, which she often played, and passable as Hamlet, Wolsey, and even Claude Melnotte. During the war she performed several times for the sanitary commissions, and gave liberally of her large fortune. She contented herself with giving readings, which were uniformly successful, from 1870 to 1875, and died, in her native city of Boston, February 18, 1876, in her sixtieth year.