Cornelius Ambrosius Logan was born on May 4, 1806 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. He was of Irish parentage, the son of a farmer who was killed by British troops while working on his farm near Baltimore, September 12, 1814. He was one of a large family of children, and early youth he sang as a church choir boy.
Logan was educated for the Catholic priesthood at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore.
Logan worked in a shipping house, and made several voyages across the Atlantic as sailor and supercargo. Reaching New York on one of his return trips, he abandoned the sea and engaged in newspaper work there. Removing to Philadelphia, he began his connection with the theatre which continued for the rest of his life.
One of his earliest appearances as an actor was made at the Tivoli Garden, Philadelphia, in July 1825, as Bertram in Maturin's tragedy of that name, and he afterward acted at the Walnut Street Theatre and other playhouses in that city. The records of the New York stage reveal him at the Bowery Theatre in 1826, announced as "a new actor from Philadelphia, " and playing Smith in The Road to Ruin, Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, and Trip in The School for Scandal.
Moving from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh with his family, he became manager of the theatre there and later embarked on a wandering career that carried him through the central West, encountering the precarious hazards of theatrical fortune by traveling with his company, baggage, scenery, and properties, by canal-boat, steamboat, and wagon. Despite his labors as manager and writer of plays, Logan never gave up acting, and his name is frequently found on the playbills of Cincinnati, where he lived for some years, and in the records of many other cities.
He acted Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal and Peter Simpson in Simpson & Co. so often that he was called Peter Logan in private life by many who supposed that it was his real name. At one time he managed a theatre in Albany, and on May 24, 1849, he returned to New York, after an absence of many years, and at Burton's Chambers Street Theatre took the part of Aminadab Slocum in his own play, Chloroform, or New York a Hundred Years Hence. It was played for eight successive nights, a remarkable run in those days.
As an actor, he is reported by one who saw him many times to be full of an innate and quiet humor that was in no degree dependent upon physical action or facial grimace. His daughter Celia declares that he was the author of The People's Lawyer, famous for its central character of Solon Shingle, and that Dr. Joseph Stevens Jones, to whom its authorship is accredited, merely revised it. He died suddenly of apoplexy near Marietta, Ohio, while on a steamboat on his way from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh.
Logan was married to Eliza (Akeley) Logan. His three daughters, all of considerable prominence on the stage, were Eliza, Celia, and Olive, and his son, Cornelius Ambrose Logan, was well known in the triple capacity of physician, journalist, and author.
