1. America's first theatre chronicler, William Dunlap, in A History of the American Theatre (1832), has been an “authoritative” source of some of the confusion about the English Hallams: “The William and Lewis Hallam [of Goodman's Fields] mentioned above were brothers of Admiral Hallam. There was a fourth brother, an actor, who was killed accidentally in the green room by the celebrated Charles Macklin. …”

DNB (entry on Isabella Hallam Mattocks): “The New Monthly Magazine for 1862, in an eulogistic article, speaks of the Hallam killed by Macklin as her father, which he was not. He does not appear even to have been her grandfather.”

Odell, G. C. D., Annals of the New York Stage (New York, 1927), I, 51Google Scholar: “William and Lewis Hallam are believed to have been sons of Adam Hallam, an actor of no distinction in Rich's company at Covent Garden. Mrs. Anne Hallam, second wife of this actor, and presumably step-mother to William and Lewis, held an excellent position at Lincoln's Inn Fields and, on the opening night of the new theatre in Covent Garden, December 7, 1743, appeared as Mrs. Marwood.” (But then Odell reports that the “Charming Sally” was a steamer.)

The writer of the entry in Oxford Companion to the Theatre, like Dunlap and Odell, confounds generations and individuals, but in a slightly different way: “The stepmother of the elder [Lewis] Hallam was a well-known actress in London, first as Mrs. Parker, then as Mrs. Berriman, and finally as Mrs. Adam Hallam.”

It is unprofitable to multiply examples of error, but they abound when the Hallams are discussed in otherwise admirable works. Seilhamer, George O., History of the American Theatre Before the Revolution, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1888)Google Scholar and Hornblow, Arthur, A History of the Theatre in America, 2 vols. (New York, 1919Google Scholar, recently re-issued, undated, by Benjamin Blom), are replete with the same errors. A particularly discouraging example lies between pp. 45–48 of Rankin's, Hugh F. generally admirable The Theatre in Colonial America (Chapel Hill, 1960).Google Scholar

2. There were connected concentrations of Hallams in the seventeenth century in Nottinghamshire and near Rotherhithe in Kent, near London.

3. Four parts in eight volumes; one more part, by Charles Beecher Hogan, in press (Carbondale, 111., 1960-).

4. BM MS Burney 939.b.l. (It is, of course, possible that this is a mistake for 1768 since that is the year in which Adam [II] died.)

5. See Scouten, London Stage, Pt. 3, II, for his performances.

6. Parker, John, Who's Who in the Theatre, 1952.Google Scholar These dates are highly questionable.

7. Letter of Isabella Hallam Mattocks, to J. Hill, Esq., 19 June 1800, MS A.l.s. Harvard Theatre Collection, reproduced in part in text p. 5, et passim. I am indebted to Kalman A. Bumim for this information and to the Curator of the Collection for permission to print it. Charnock, John, Biographia Navalis, 6 vols. (London, 1798), VI, 484Google Scholar, lists a “Thomas Hallum” who was then still alive, though retired, and who had been appointed a lieutenant in the navy “as far back as the 6th of January, 1741–2.” This would bring his age into line with the “second generation.” Charnock outlines his career, which was evidently advanced by his early friendship with Harland, later a famous admiral. He evidently retired around 1780, but in 1793 was appointed “to the rank of rear-admiral on the superannuated list.” His service during the American Revolution would have been enough alone to account for the departure of the Hallams from America.

8. Sacheverel Hale, d. Bristol, 21 August 1746 (Isaac Reed, “Notitia Dramatica,” BM Add. MS 25, 391, II, fol. 75v; BM MS Burney 939.b.l; Thespian Dictionary, 1805); John Barrington, d. 1773 (Folger MS Jerome 18: d. 15 Jan 1773; Reed, II, 255v: d. 24 Jan 1773; Burney 939.b.l: d. 24 Dec 1773; but Burney 338.2: “died Jany 1773.) Buried Jany 25.” Morning Chronicle, 25 January 1773: buried 24 January in burying ground near the Foundling Hospital. “The first person who received an annuity from the fund instituted by the performers of [Covent Garden] Theatre.” The burial ground belonged to St. George the Martyr parish. (MC notation furnished me by C. B. Hogan.) BM MS 11826R, Vol. 9, states the Mrs. Hale who first appeared at CG on 3 Oct. 1739 to have been “Miss Hallam.” Her first name is furnished in a letter which she directed to the Theatrical Monitor of 5 November 1768. (For this last I am indebted to Hogan.)

9. He died at Kentish Town in 1768 (Reed, II, 223v: “Uncle to Mrs. Mattocks” d. “June 3”; Folger MS Winston, Book 10: d. 15 July 1768.)

10. See Oral S. Coad, DAB account.

11. Joseph Berriman (or Berryman) d. February, 1730 (BM MS Latreille, II. 318v; BM MS 11791 dd. v. 5); buried 6 April 1730 (St. Paul, Covent Garden, Registers, IV, 318) “Joseph Berryman, from Ironmonger's Lane, St. Martin's.”

12. BM Add. MS 18, 586.

13. Environs, I, 259. This is noticed by Hogan, who does not quote it.

14. London Daily Post, 9 June 1740.

15. Adam and his wife were resident “next door to the Chapel in Great Queen Street” from 1736 onward. William had recently become proprietor of the New Wells,.Goodman's Fields (Latreille, IV, 46v), and his wife, on her benefit bill of 21 April 1740 gave her address as “Hooper's Square, Goodman's Fields.” She had suffered a “sudden and dangerous indisposition” on 10 September 1739, and had since appeared infrequently (Latreille, IV, 30).

16. On 21 October 1741, administration of the property of Bethia Hallam was granted to “Adam Hallam her husband” of the Parish of St. Giles. (Administration Books of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Somerset House.) It is possible, of course, that Adam and William had actually married sisters.

17. “1743 Nov. 2 Adam Hallan [sic] of the Parish [sic] of St Gyles in the Fields … and Isabella Agar in the Parish of St Stephen's, near Canterbury,” were married at St. Martin Outwich. (Register … Marriages, p. 68) “1743 Nov 1 Adam [Hallam] of St Giles F[ie]lds M[iddlese]x Wid[ower] to Marr[y] Is[a]b[ella] Agar of Sf Ste[phen,] Canterbury Spin[ster] 25 [years of age] at St Martin Outwich or G[rea]t Queen St Chappie Bishop of Lon[don] M L [Marriage License].” (“Index” of Society of Genealogists.)

18. Letter of Isabella Hallam Mattocks, to J. Hill, Esq., 19 June 1800, MS A.l.s. Harvard Theatre Collection. He may, however, have been the son of Admiral Thomas Hallam. He is very probably the George Hallam who wrote A Narrative Voyage from Montego Bay in the Island of Jamaica, to England (1831), in the title-page of which he is described as “some years before second Lieutenant-Colonel of the 17th regiment of infantry.” I am indebted to the late Professor Alan Downer for calling my attention to this book, and for other helpful suggestions.

19. James Winston's transcription of the Record Book of the Drury Lane Actors’ Fund in the Folger Library (Case 414): “Com[mence]d … 1781/2. Subscribed 1 pound 1 in 1785. Died Nov 1805.”

20. Allston Brown, T., History of the American Stage (New York, 1870)Google Scholar says that she died in Philadelphia, 1773; Oral Coad, DAB, and Hogan, C. B., Shakespeare in the Theatre (Oxford, 1952 and 1957)Google Scholar, that she died c. 1774; Isaac Reed, “Notitia Dramatica” (BM Add. MS 25391), II, 283: “In April this year [1777] died Mrs. Douglas formerly Mrs Hallam, Mother to Mrs Mattocks at Spanish Town Jamaica.…”

21. See Oral S. Coad, “Lewis Hallam,” DAB; and Pollock, T. C., The Philadelphia Theatre in the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1933), p. 53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Wright, Richardson, Bevels in Jamaica (New York, 1937), p. 38.Google Scholar See also the standard accounts of the theatres in Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia.

23. He appears in casts through 1759. See notices of his first two appearances in Odell, op. cit., I, 61–62.

24. See accounts in DNB and, especially, Secret History of the Green Room (1795), I, 139–44; and Authentic Memoirs of the Green Room (1806), II, “Addenda,” pp. 57–58. Neither of these latter accounts, both of which utilize information given by Mrs. Mattocks to Hill, was employed by DNB. “Mrs. Hallam became Mrs. Mattocks on or about Easter Sunday (April 3, 1765).” (Winston, Folger MS Book 9; cited by Stone, LS, Pt. 4, II, 1106.)

25. Wright, , op. cit., p. 38.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., p. 113.

27. Marriage Register, p. 340. Her mother witnessed the marriage, along with one Jno. Richards, perhaps the theatrical artist and architect John Inigo Richards (d. 18 Dec. 1810), who had long been scene-painter at Covent Garden. (See Rosenfeld, Sybil and Croft-Murray, Edward, “A Checklist of Scene Painters working in Great Britain and Ireland in the 18th Century (4),” Theatre Notebook, XIX [Summer, 1965], 142.)Google Scholar But then again he may have been the musician John Richards, acting Sergeant-Trumpeter of England (d. 28 February 1809; London Guildhall MS 1514).

28. Clark, William Smith, The Early Irish Stage from the Beginnings to 1720 (Oxford, 1955), pp. 125–70Google Scholar, et passim. In the first volume of his study, Clark stated that the Hallam who had appeared in Dublin in 1707, and whom he believed at that time to be Adam, later became the father of the actor, Lewis Hallam, leader of the company of players who came to Williamsburg. Clark now has informed me that he had corrected this first Hallam to Thomas in the manuscript text of his third volume. Thus in reassessing the identity of this Hallam in Dublin in 1707 to Thomas, Clark inadvertently renders his statement correct by properly identifying the father of Lewis (I) to be Thomas.

29. The Irish Stage in the Country Towns (Oxford, 1955), pp. 147, 360. John Barrington is to marry this Adam's sister in 1749. This may be their first meeting. Dennis Delane (d. 1750), celebrated Irish actor (DNB); Roger Bridgewater (d. 20 August 1754; General Magazine, VIII [Aug., 1754], 443).

30. Griffin was born in 1680, died 18 February 1740 (DNB). Norris died 10 February 1731. (Hogan, C. B., “Eighteenth-Century Actors in the DNB: Additions and Corrections, iii,” Theatre Notebook, VI (1952), 90.Google Scholar)

31. “Benefit Mr. and Mrs. Roberts … Tickets for Hallam and Wetherilt taken.”

32. I believe that the younger man played the part of Prince Polydore in Mallet's Eurydice on 22 February 1731, even though the bill notes only “Hallam.” Since there was only one Hallam acting that night, there was evidently no need to distinguish. The Auditor (No. 9, 6 February 1733) praises Hallam's Laertes, and compares his Charles in Fop's Fortune favourably to that of Wilkes.

33. Macklin, apparently by an unintentional fencer's reflex, thrust a small stick into Hallam's eye and brain as they heatedly debated the matter of the wig in the Green Room on the evening of 10 May 1735. Macklin was indicted but escaped with a technical conviction of manslaughter, for which it appears that he never suffered any penalty. A transcript of the testimony of Macklin, Thomas Ame, Thomas Whitaker, one Cole, Francis Lee, Ellis Roberts, Thomas Salway, Robert Turbutt (all present at the ghastly affair) and of the surgeon Mr. Coldham, can be found in Kirkman's, James ThomasMemoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq. (London, 1799), I, 190–204.Google Scholar A brief, less circumstantial account is given by Appleton, William W., Charles Macklin; an Actor's Life (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 29–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. P. 12; see also Folger MS T.b.l; BM Latreille MS, III, 225v; BM Add. MS 25,391.

35. Letter to a Certain Patentee (1748): “I need go no farther back than the Misfortune that befel Mr. [Lacy] R[ya]n, when he was shot in the Mouth: He being, by this Accident, incapable of Playing; the all-wise Manager, Mr. R-h, was so generous, as to engage in his stead, that pretty-friggling Thing Mr. H-ll-m, at six Guineas per Week, who having full as good an Opinion of himself, as Mr. R–h could possibly have, would not condescend to be a stop-gap for this uncertain Interval, and add to the Lustre of that Stage by his Presence, except the Clory of it should be continued for six or seven Years, which was granted.”

Even more misleading is the statement by Thomas Davies, that it was only after Rich saw Adam in the part of Aumerle in his revival of Richard II in 1738 “that he hired him for seven years at a very large salary.” Dramatic Miscellanies (London, 1785), 1,100.

36. Adam probably spent a good part of the 1737–38 season preparing his summer booths for Tottenham Court Fair, Batholomew Fair and Southwark Fair– see Scouten, LS, Pt. 3, II. At the end of the 1740–41 season, he ran a booth in competition with his brothers. Reed, “Notitia Dramatica,” II, fol. 48, speaks of two Bartholomew Fair booths run by Hallams in 1741, “Hallam from Cov.^t Gard.ⁿ [Adam]” and “Hallam from Goodman's Fields [William].”

37. Davies, , Dramatic Miscellanies, I, 100.Google Scholar

38. Ibid.

39. On 21 January Williams took the second gravedigger's part.

40. Rosenfeld, Sybil, Strolling Players and Drama in the Provinces (Cambridge, Eng., 1939), pp. 225–26.Google Scholar

41. 14th ed. edited by Freda Gaye (London, 1967), p. 1635.

42. Davies, , Dramatic Miscellanies, I, 4–5.Google Scholar

43. Ibid.

44. At the time of her benefit on 16 March 1736, Mrs. Hallam was living in “Lodgings at Mr. Bailey's [a grocer] Corner of James street, Long Acre.” By April, 1737 the William Hallams had moved to Wild Court. She was “allowed 172 days at 16/8 or 143.6.8,” in 1735–36. He, for the same number of days, got only “2/6 or 26/12/6, and no benefit.” (BM MS 11791 dd. 18, vol. 3).

45. Clark believes that William may have played a part in The Royal Merchant in November and December of 1736 at Dublin.

46. Scouten, LS, Pt. 3, II, 781. This was probably William. Lewis perhaps assisted him in later seasons, and at least once Lewis ran his own booth. During the thirties and forties the Hallams were among the most constant purveyors of the drolls, harlequinades, music and dancing in these booths at Mermaid Court, Southwark Fair, Tottenham Court Fair, Bartholomew Fair. It is useless to try to follow these seasonal enterprises. The London Stage records a sufficient number, though not nearly all.

47. Croft-Murray, E., John Devoto; A Baroque Scene-Painter (London, 1953), p. 13Google Scholar, quotes a few lines from an LDP notice of 3 July 1742, evidently different in wording. Hallam's name is not mentioned.

48. Davies, , Dramatic Miscellanies, I, 4.Google Scholar

49. See note 7, above.

50. Rosenfeld, , Strolling Players, pp. 212–13.Google Scholar

51. BM Add. MS 33, 488; and see note 17, above. Her will, made on 31 October and proved on 18 November 1805 shows her to have left little property. She lived in Suffolk Street, Charing Cross (PCC, Nov. 1805, fol. 838).

52. General History (London, 1749), pp. 102–03.

53. These and other details of Dublin performances are furnished through the kindness of Professor William Clark.

54. Clark, , Irish Stage in the County Towns, p. 350.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., p. 147.

56. She opened the season as “Mrs Hale,” and first appeared as “Mrs Barrington” on 29 October.

57. Rosenfeld, , Strolling Players, p. 183.Google Scholar

58. Ibid., p. 254.

59. John Wignell was a playwright and a minor actor in Garrick's company. He died on 25 January 1774 (Biographica Dramatica, 1812; Morning Chronicle, 26 January 1774, which furnishes his first name). In 1768 his wife Henrietta had been Colman's keeper of the women's wardrobe “16 years or thereabouts.” (Folger MS cs 413, fol. 150). Jack Wignell was a whimsical and eccentric figure, fond of sending “rhymed greetings” to his friends before his benefits, and, says Stephen Jones, he “possessed the singular talent of imparting stateliness to comic dialogues, and merriment to tragic scenes” (Biog. Dram., 1812). See the account of his son Thomas by Oral S. Coad, DAB. Coad calls Thomas (ca. 1753–21 February 1803) a “cousin” of the Hallams, presumably on the authority of Dunlap (History, p. 35).

60. Rosenfeld, , Strolling Players, p. 255.Google Scholar

61. The Dramatic Mirror (London, 1808), I, 181.

62. See Gentleman's Magazine, XIV (May, 1744), 278–79. Scouten, LS, Pt. 3, II, 1110, prints much of the presentment.

63. See LS, Pt. 3, 11, 1117.

64. Ibid., p. 1179.

65. Quoted by BM MS Latreille, IV, 311.

66. Against this conclusion, however, there is some slight evidence that both “Hallam” and “Hallam Sr” may designate William instead of George: the fact that in the next season William's habitual part of Boniface in Beaux’ Stratagem (on 31 October 1746) is opposite “Hallam” in the bill, that on 28 October 1746 one of the recruits in Recruiting Officer is opposite “Hallam Sr” and that William had played one of the recruits on 2 Jan. 1746. This seems to me to weigh very slightly in the balance, considering the triviality of the part and the fallibility of bills considered individually.

67. Scouten, , LS, Pt. 3, II, 1249.Google Scholar

68. Ibid., pp. 1247–48.

69. Ibid., p. 1257.

70. Cunningham, John E., The History of the. Theatre Royal Birmingham (Oxford, 1950), pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

71. MS Accounts of Jacob's Wells Theatre, Birmingham Central Reference Library (B13011).

72. Rosenfeld, , Strolling Players, pp. 187–88.Google Scholar

73. This anecdote in its exact phraseology is taken from the letter, along with other data, by the editor of Authentic Memoirs of the Green Room, 1806, II, 57–58. I presume him to be the J. Hill to whom the letter is addressed. But Mrs. Mattocks’ memory (or arithmetic) is faulty. While she asserts that she was four years old when she first went on in these parts, the bills show her debut to have been in 1752. Elsewhere in the letter she states “I was born in the year ‘46.” (It is interesting, by the way, to note that the role of Duke of York, a favorite for the introduction of small children, had served for Aunt Ann Barrington's debut at Canterbury in 1733, and in 1753 would be the first serious role for Isabella's brother Adam [III] before American audiences.)

74. November 13, 1752: “A Concert … by a set of Mr. Hallam's Friends…. As the Wells have been shut up all the past Summer, and are now open'd only upon this occasion, Mr Hallam hopes the Town will be so indulgent as to honour him with their Company, and the Favour will always be gratefully acknowledged.” (Quoted by Stone, G. W., LS, Pt. 4, I, 331.)Google Scholar Other benefits on 16, 20, 23, 28, and 30 November. Wignell was among those cooperating.

75. She is in the bills simply as “a Young Gentlewoman,” but she is identified by Winston MS 9, and the Covent Garden Account Book. (Stone, , LS, Pt. 4, II, 856.)Google Scholar This confirms still another collection of her letter to Hill.

76. The Folger Library has the Liverpool account books for several of the seasons in which Mattocks managed there. The London Chroncile for April 13–16, 1771 notes: “Mr Mattocks, of Covent Garden Theatre, has purchased the Playhouse at Portsmouth…”

77. Folger MSS Z.e.20; W.b.436.

78. BM MS Egerton 2299.

79. Secret History of the Green Room, I, 139–44; DNB.

80. The London Chronicle (January 3–5, 1775) reported: “On Tuesday night Mr Hallam, brother to Mrs Mattocks, made his first appearance on the English stage at Covent Garden, in the character of Hamlet, in which he was received with tolerable applause, though the audience in general was of the opinion that he would have succeeded much better if he had started in a part that did not require such capital abilities as the Prince of Denmark.” The playbill identifies him only as “a Gentleman being his first appearance in Europe.” Stone cites Folger Winston MS 11, also.

81. Coad, “Lewis Hallam,” DAB.

82. Rankin, , The Theatre in Colonial America, pp. 151Google Scholar, 196–97, 200, and 213, n. 1, postulates that Sarah Hallam, first wife of Lewis (II), was abandoned by her husband and settled in Williamsburg, where she died in 1793. Rankin bases his assumptions in part upon records of a lawsuit brought by Sarah in 1769 in Williamsburg against William Verling and Charles Parker for non-payment of debt, and upon a letter of Peter Early to John Gibson of 17 January 1793.

83. Cf., ibid., pp. 104, 155–60, 163–64, 213, n. 1, 220, n. 6. Rankin assumes that the “Miss Hallam” who appears with Douglass in Charleston in the season of 1765–66, and subsequently with the company to their departure in 1775, to be this Nancy Hallam returned from training in London. She is never identified by first name, though she is the subject of various laudatory verses and a portrait by Charles Wilson Peale. This “Miss Hallam” married in Jamaica in 1775.

84. I can find no evidence to link the John Hallam cited by Brown, op. cit., (b. Sheffield, first appearance, Kendall, England, 1814; d. Boston, 1829; m. Miss Stannard [who d. Paducah, Ky., 1838]) with the Hallams we have been following.

85. I wish to thank Professors Attilio Favorini and George E. Bogusch for their extraordinary editorial efforts and indispensable advice. This article could not have appeared without their help.