Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 February 1894 — AN ACTOR’S BIRTHPLACE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AN ACTOR’S BIRTHPLACE.

Glimpses of the Quaint Old House In Which Joe Jefferson Was Born. At the southwest corner of Sixth and Spruce streets, in Philadelphia, stands the house shown in the accompanying illustration. It is a roomy tbree-§tory brick dwelling with a high attic, a structure of the genuine old Quaker City type—green shutters, marble steps and all. In architecture it is unmistakably colonial, but time has wrought many changes, an<J what was once a parlor Is now a salesroom for Florentine casts. Curious clay busts and quaint groups peer through the windows of the erstwhile bed-rooms, in one of which Joseph Jefferson first saw tho light in 1829, nearly sixty-five years ago. It was in 1826 Joseph Jefferson, the seeond, met and married Cornelia Burke, the widow of Thomas Burke, a well-known Irish comedian of that day, and herself a popular singer and dancer. Mrs. Burke was nearly a decade older than Joseph Jefferson, who was barely of age when he married, and she already had one child by her former husband, called Charles Burke, who, like his father, after.

■ ward achieved success in comedy. Immediately after the marriage Jo- : seph Jefferson rented the house on ■ Spruce street, and here young Joe, now our old Joe, was born three years later. Coming down from a long line of actors on his father’s side, as well as inheriting talent from his mother, Joseph Jefferson, third, very early made his bow to the public. It is said his first appearance was at the 1 age of four in Philadelphia. Certain it is he played in New York in 1837 with both his parents and half-broth-er, Charles Burke.

JOE JEFFERSON’S BIRTHPLACE.