Facebook post #038 (Oct 2020)
Our Frances Mousley (from last week’s post) had a first cousin Catherine, who married Henry Cox Bury in Rugby in 1865. One of their daughters was Edith Bury.
I (eventually) found her in 1901, in Paddington, living under her stage name of Edith Ostlere. She was an actress and authoress, whom had been on Broadway in the 1890s. Her best-known appearance, in ‘One of the Best’, was featured in the Illustrated London News (pic). Her writing was under a nom de plume, Robert Ord – reviews suggest that she pushed the melodrama to its limits!
By 1911, she was living under yet another name, Mackay, with her husband (William) Gayer Starbuck Mackay. He was also an actor – I found a very rude review (a “mollycoddle”) in the Washington Post. The couple co-wrote (and appeared) in plays in the West End, and on Broadway. I managed to find one of their visiting cards too (pic).
Gayer died in Milford Haven, Wales, the town which his Starbuck family had found desolate and lonely when they moved there from Nantucket to establish a whaling colony after the American War of Independence had disrupted trade. Starbucks coffee is named after a semi-fictional version of one of the family, the first mate on the ‘Moby Dick’.
