an IBERIA PARISH article

Cultures of Acadiana
a look at the French, Cajun, Creole, and Native American cultures of south Louisiana
(a project of Carencro High School - 721 West Butcher Switch Road, Lafayette, LA  70507)

Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, November 25, 1997

Joseph Jefferson was known for Rip Van Winkle role

by Jim Bradshaw

Joseph Jefferson first visited the island that would bear his name in the late 1860s, after a friend told him that the place, then known as Orange Island, was for sale. He had gained fame and fortune as an actor, particularly for his role as Rip Van Winkle, a part that he would play some 4,500 times.

Jefferson was born in Philadelphia on Feb. 20, 1829, the son of actor and actress Joseph and Cornelia Jefferson. As a toddler he acted in several stage performances with his parents, and never left the stage.

As biographer Diane Moore puts it: "Traveling with his family from the East to the South, Jefferson became a stage-struck child, a fourth generation actor who fell in love with footlights and the old-fashioned hair trunks which held costumes for dramas his family enacted. When his father died of yellow fever in 1842, Joseph Jefferson became part of a comedy duet with his sister."

In 1843 he joined a company of traveling players that offered everything from high Shakespeare and low comedy as it traveled through Texas and then followed the U.S. Army of Occupation into Matamoros after the Mexican War.

Upon his return to the states, he played mostly minor roles in Philadelphia and New York and on a "Southern theatrical circuit." In 1849 in New York he met and married Margaret Lockyer, an actress.

Jefferson became stage manager at the Baltimore Museum in 1853 and became manager of the John T. Ford theater in Richmond, Va., in 1854. In 1856 he toured London and Paris, returning to play parts in New York in 1857.

During the summer of 1859, Jefferson began reading "The Life and Letters of Washington Irving," and became entranced with the character of Rip Van Winkle. Using the book and three older versions of stage plays about the character, Jefferson created his own version of the drama. He performed it first at Carusi's Hall in Washington, D.C.

He would play Rip Van Winkle around the world, particularly after 1861, when his first wife died. That year he sailed from San Francisco to Australia, where he performed at Melbourne and Sydney, then went on to tour New Zealand, South America, later passing through St. Thomas and Jamaica, and then on to Europe, reaching London in June 1865.

Following his return to America, Jefferson married a second cousin, Sarah Warren, on Dec. 20, 1867.

In addition to his acting, Jefferson gained some repute as a painter, and did much of his painting at Jefferson Island. He had been attracted to landscape painting while he was in Paris in 1875 and had studied the styles of several artists.

He died in Palm Beach, Ala. in 1905 at the age of 76.

This article is copyrighted © by the Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser and is used with permission.  This web site was originated through a grant awarded to Carencro High School (Joel Hilbun/Bobbi Marino, Grant Administrators) by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from the Louisiana Quality Education Support Fund - 8(g).