Background
John Thompson Ford was the son of Elias and Anna (Greanor) Ford and was born in Baltimore. His ancestors were early Maryland settlers and some of them took part in the Revolutionary War.
John Thompson Ford was the son of Elias and Anna (Greanor) Ford and was born in Baltimore. His ancestors were early Maryland settlers and some of them took part in the Revolutionary War.
For a few years he attended public school in Baltimore and then became a clerk in his uncle’s tobacco factory in Richmond.
Not caring for this work, he became a book-seller. He then wrote a farce dealing with local matters, entitled Richmond As It Is, which was produced by a minstrel company called The Nightingale Serenaders. This farce met with not a little success; and George Kunkel, the owner and manager of the Serenaders, offered him a position with the organization. He accepted, and for several seasons traveled as business manager of this company throughout the United States and Canada.
In 1854, he assumed control of the Holliday Street Theatre, Baltimore, and this he managed for twenty-five years.
Plis first theatre in Tenth Street was destroyed by fire and on the same site he built the theatre known as Ford’s Theatre. He was the manager of this house at the time of the assassination of President Lincoln.
Soon after this national tragedy he, together with his brother Harry Clay Ford, was incarcerated for thirty-nine days in the Old Capitol Prison. Since there was no evidence of their complicity in the crime, the brothers finally were fully exonerated and set free.
The theatre was seized by the government and Ford was paid $100, 000 for it by Congress. At the same time an order was issued prohibiting forever its use as a place of public amusement.
On June 9, 1893, while five hundred government employees were at work, the front part of this building collapsed and twenty-eight persons were killed. It was soon after rebuilt. During his career, Ford also managed theatres in Alexandria, Virginia, Philadelphia, and Richmond.
It was at the Richmond Theatre, in 1857, that Edwin Booth, then under Ford’s management, first met the lovely Mary Devlin whom he later married. Joseph Jefferson was then the stage manager and a member of the company of this theatre.
Ford also managed a great number of traveling as well as resident companies which included the greatest stars and actors of his generation. He was honest and honorable in all his numerous business dealings.
During the Pinafore craze, for example, he was the only American manager who paid Gilbert and Sullivan a royalty on the opera. This action prompted the authors, in presenting their next opera to America, to entrust their business affairs to him; and he leased the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, for the production of The Pirates of Penzance. For a period of forty years he was an active, prominent, and useful factor in civic life. He was connected with many banking and financial concerns, and his business advice was sought and relied on.
He was president of the Union Railroad Company, member of the Board of Directors of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, vice-president of the West Baltimore Improvement Association, and trustee of numerous philanthropic institutions.
In 1858, while serving as president of the city council, he was by force of circumstances made acting-mayor of the city of Baltimore and this position he filled with marked ability.
He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, vice-president of the West Baltimore Improvement Association, and trustee of numerous philanthropic institutions.
He was honest and honorable in all his numerous business dealings.
His winning and gracious personality won him a host of friends.
He died suddenly after an attack of the grippe, leaving a widow, Edith Branch Andrew Ford, who was the mother of eleven children.