Frederick Bartlett Conway was born on February 10, 1819 at Clifton, England. His father, William A. Conway, also an actor, came to the United States in 1821, and committed suicide by leaping from a steamship off Charleston, South Carolina, in 1828.
Frederick Bartlett had developed a “fair position” on the English stage before he came to America to try his fortunes. He opened here as Charles Surface in The School for Scandal, at the Broadway Theatre, New York, on August 19, 1850. In October he appeared at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, as Claude Melnotte. His acting attracted attention, and he was engaged by Edwin Forrest to play Iago to that star’s Othello, and De Mauprat to his Richelieu. in 1854 he played Armand to the Camille of Jean Davenport Lander, whose production of that play was the first in America, preceding the more famous one by Matilda Heron. Conway, not E. A. Sothern, was accordingly the original Armand in America. Conway and his wife Sarah Crocker played much together, making joint starring tours, and, as was then the fashion, appearing with the local stock companies. In 1855 they played an engagement at the Boston Museum, for example, being “supported” by such actors as William Warren—a far finer player than Conway. Here they acted Morton’s All That Glitters Is Not Gold.
In 1859 they leased Pike’s Opera House in Cincinnati, and endeavored to conduct a stock company there, but the venture failed. In 1861 they visited London, acting at Sadler’s Wells. In 1864, Mrs. Conway, who appears to have been the executive member of the family, leased the Park Theatre in Brooklyn, which became known as Conway’s Theatre, and was for many years thereafter a fashionable amusement resort in that city. Here they both appeared in the majority of the bills, and here their two young daughters, Lillian and Minnie, made their debuts.
Programs of the theatre show that Conway played Malvolio to his wife’s Viola in 1864, but that evidently Irish plays were more popular than the classics, for we find records of The Colleen Bawn, Peep o’ Day, or Savourneen Deelish, and Green Bushes, or the Hunter of the Mississippi—a Romantic Irish Drama. In the absence of the text, the connection between Ireland and the Mississippi is not entirely clear. There was also a “sensational drama” made from the popular American story, Cudjo’s Cave, and Conway played Richelieu in The Three Guardsmen. The programs suggest rather the work of a routine stock company catering to a romantic public taste than the productions of original and creative artists.
Frederick Bartlett Conway acted in many theatrical productions during his career and with the great success in the classical plays, including Macbeth. He was considered the best John Mildmay in Still Waters Run Deep ever seen on the American stage, and he was excellent as Armand in Camille. He was also popular in romantic Irish roles.
In 1852 Conway married an American actress, Sarah Crocker, the sister of Mrs. D. P. Bowers (Elizabeth Crocker) also well known on the stage. They were daughters of William Crocker, a Methodist preacher of Ridgefield, Connecticut. Conways had two daughters, Lillian and Minnie.
