Thomas Abthorpe Cooper: America’s First Star

That’s right! Thomas Abthorpe Cooper (1775-1849). Wanna make something of it?

Most people (or many people) would guess Edwin Forrest, but he was just America’s first native-born stage star. Cooper was British born, and first began acting in the States in 1796, when the country was still in its infancy. The most interesting thing about him to my mind is that he was the adopted son of none other than radical philosopher William Godwin, later the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft and father of Frankenstein creator Mary Shelley. By the time she was born Cooper had already made his first trip to America. It’s enticing to regard them as “siblings” but it really wasn’t like that.

The other really interesting thing about him is that his daughter married the son of President John Tyler, so he was on the receiving end of some sinecure positions late in life.

Cooper had naturally received an excellent if nontraditional education at the hands of Godwin, and was also a protege of the British Republican sympathizer Thomas Holcroft, who had helped Thomas Paine publish The Rights of Man. These two mentors encouraged the orphaned Cooper in his theatrical leanings. As early as age 13 he had made amateur demonstrations in roles such as Hamlet. His two patrons got him a position with Kemble’s company, where he learned the rudiments of professionalism before becoming one of England’s top actors. In the U.S. he performed at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia and the Greenwich Village and Park Theatres in New York City, as well as venues in Boston, Washington DC and the Deep South.

In his book Thomas Abthorpe Cooper: Father of the American Stage, 1775-1849 author F. Arant Maginnes claims that a decade after Cooper’s death, the actor’s Confederate-sympathizing daughter and son-in-law had to flee the family estate in Bristol, Pennsylvania on the eve of the Civil War, leaving behind a lot the documentary evidence that might have helped posterity recall this pioneering player. We do our bit today to revive his memory.