The Times In Which
 Joseph Haworth Lived
(1855-1903)

1865

The Civil War ended in 1865 when Joseph Haworth was ten years old. Nevertheless, it is the most important historical event in his entire life. The War cost young Haworth his father, and necessitated his leaving school to seek work to support his mother, sisters, and younger brother, William.

His first job was in a newspaper office. The stories carried by the papers in those years included the Lincoln assassination, the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, and the ratification of the thirteenth amendment to the U. S. Constitution, outlawing slavery.
 

1869

In 1869, when Joe was fourteen years old, the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads were joined at Promontory, Utah, creating the first transcontinental railroad.
 

1873

In May of 1873, Joe made his professional debut as Richmond in Richard III opposite Charlotte Crampton at John Ellsler’s Cleveland Academy of Music. Ulysses S. Grant’s second inauguration had taken place two months earlier.

1876

By 1876, Haworth was getting excellent newspaper notices as Malcolm in Macbeth starring Fanny Janauschek, while the front pages were consumed with George Armstrong Custer’s defeat at the Little Big Horn River.

1877

The year 1877 saw Joseph Haworth’s New York debut performances, first at the Eagle Theatre in support of Anna Dickinson, and then at the famed Daly’s Theatre with the legendary Adelaide Neilson.

 That year also marked the construction of the first telephone line between Somerville, Mass. and Boston.

1881

 On September 19, 1881, Haworth was performing in the American premiere production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience at the Boston Museum Theatre, when President James A. Garfield died of an assassin’s wounds.

1885

In February 1885, Joseph Haworth made his first appearance with Helene Modjeska in a benefit performance of As You Like It for Polish exiles.

The following month, Grover Cleveland was sworn in as the twenty-second United States President.

In 1885, Joe also appeared in a benefit for the Statue of Liberty pedestal fund, which was dedicated the following year.

1888

On May 5, 1888, Haworth led the Broadway Company of Steele Mackaye’s Paul Kauvar to the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., for the benefit of the statue of George Washington to be given by the United States to the Republic of France. The performance was under the patronage of President and Mrs. Cleveland. The President attended, along with scores of senators, foreign legations, and the best circles of society.

1890

Joe toured the United States in 1890, performing the double bill of Aunt Jack and A Man of the World. As the country witnessed the versatile Haworth play both an elderly comedic barrister and a dashing leading man, the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association was formed, the Sherman Antitrust Act was signed into law, and the last major battle of the Indian Wars was fought at Wounded Knee.

1892

Joe’s neoclassical repertory toured and played New York in 1892. The plays included The Bells, St. Marc, Ruy Blas, and A Man of the World.

That same year, Ellis Island became the chief immigration station to the United States.

1893

While Haworth was acting in The Froth of Society in 1893, Grover Cleveland was inaugurated a second time, the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms.

1896

Joseph Haworth had a hit in Bret Harte’s play Sue in 1896, while the Supreme Court held that racial segregation was constitutional. This landmark decision was made in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. It paved the way for the repressive Jim Crow laws in the south.

1898

In February 1898, Joseph Haworth and Helene Modjeska were the toast of New York, co-starring in a repertory of Camille, Macbeth, Magda, Measure for Measure, and Mary Stuart. Outside the theatre, newspaper boys shouted that the battleship USS Maine had been bombed in Havana Harbor.

As Modjeska and Haworth left New York to tour in April, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Spanish-American War.

1900

Haworth had an enormous hit in 1900 as Vinicius in Quo Vadis at the New York Theatre.

That same year Galveston, Texas took a tragic and devastating hit. A massive hurricane took between 6,000 and 8,000 lives.

1901

In September of 1901, Joseph Haworth was embarking on an enormously successful starring engagement in San Francisco, California. His repertory included Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, and Quo Vadis.

That same month in Buffalo, NY, anarchist Leon Czolosz shot President McKinley, who died from his wounds on September 14.

Vice President Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him.

1903

Haworth had artistic and commercial success in 1903 with his performance as Prince Dimitri Neckhuldoff in Tolstoy’s Resurrection at Hammerstein’s Victoria Theatre.

It proved to be his last role. He died of congestive heart failure in August of 1903.