George A. Parkhurst (March 18, 1841 â€" July 2, 1890) was an American
stage actor who was one of the last surviving members of the company
of actors present on the night of April 14, 1865, when John Wilkes
Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln during their performance
of Our American Cousin. Late in his life Parkhurst created the role of
Hobbs in the 1888 American debut of Little Lord Fauntleroy.When Booth
shot President Lincoln, Parkhurst was onstage playing the part of a
bailiff as a member of a stock company managed by the British actress
Laura Keene. Parkhurst had planned to stop by Booth’s dressing room
at Ford's Theatre that night to borrow a costume; an appointment that
for different reasons both missed.George A. Parkhurst was born in New
York State and may have been raised in Bergen, New Jersey, with his
brother Benjamin. Parkhurst received some training for the stage from
the actor Edwin Forrest. Eventually though, as a husband and father,
he chose for the time to stay with his job as a postal clerk at the
nation’s capitol. By the 1880s he apparently felt secure enough to
become more active on stage and later found success playing Hobbs in
the original American productions of Little Lord Fauntleroy. During
this time Parkhurst had toured for several seasons with actress Maggie
Mitchell's company in the play Fanchon, the Cricket, an adaptation of
George Sand's La Petite Fadette by August Waldauer, and received
critical acclaim for the role he was most proud of, Colonel Buzzy in a
theatrical production of Amélie Rives' The Quick or the
Dead.Parkhurst died on July 2, 1890, at the age of forty-nine, after
suffering a stroke at his New York residence. He was survived by his
second wife Clara (née Morell; 1865â€"1913). Katherine "Kate"
Parkhurst (1845â€"1881), his first wife, was the mother of his three
children of which two, Benjamin and Bianca, survived to adulthood.
Parkhurst was interred at Prospect Hill Cemetery, Washington, D.C.
stage actor who was one of the last surviving members of the company
of actors present on the night of April 14, 1865, when John Wilkes
Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln during their performance
of Our American Cousin. Late in his life Parkhurst created the role of
Hobbs in the 1888 American debut of Little Lord Fauntleroy.When Booth
shot President Lincoln, Parkhurst was onstage playing the part of a
bailiff as a member of a stock company managed by the British actress
Laura Keene. Parkhurst had planned to stop by Booth’s dressing room
at Ford's Theatre that night to borrow a costume; an appointment that
for different reasons both missed.George A. Parkhurst was born in New
York State and may have been raised in Bergen, New Jersey, with his
brother Benjamin. Parkhurst received some training for the stage from
the actor Edwin Forrest. Eventually though, as a husband and father,
he chose for the time to stay with his job as a postal clerk at the
nation’s capitol. By the 1880s he apparently felt secure enough to
become more active on stage and later found success playing Hobbs in
the original American productions of Little Lord Fauntleroy. During
this time Parkhurst had toured for several seasons with actress Maggie
Mitchell's company in the play Fanchon, the Cricket, an adaptation of
George Sand's La Petite Fadette by August Waldauer, and received
critical acclaim for the role he was most proud of, Colonel Buzzy in a
theatrical production of Amélie Rives' The Quick or the
Dead.Parkhurst died on July 2, 1890, at the age of forty-nine, after
suffering a stroke at his New York residence. He was survived by his
second wife Clara (née Morell; 1865â€"1913). Katherine "Kate"
Parkhurst (1845â€"1881), his first wife, was the mother of his three
children of which two, Benjamin and Bianca, survived to adulthood.
Parkhurst was interred at Prospect Hill Cemetery, Washington, D.C.
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