John T. Raymond was born on April 5, 1836 in Buffalo, New York. His real name, John O'Brien, he abandoned early in life for the professional name by which he became universally known. It was not until 1881, however, that he made it his legal name by authorization of the courts.
From June 27, 1853, the day of his first appearance on the professional stage in the small part of Lopez in John Tobin's old comedy, The Honeymoon, he lacked no opportunity to appear before the public, and it was not long after his début before he was receiving the reward of incessant laughter for acting that was as uniquely comic as was his own personality.
He was one of the type of actors who rely upon facial and physical eccentricities to obtain their effects.
Among his early engagements were appearances in stock companies in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other cities, and tours in support of Julia Dean Hayne and Anna Cora Mowatt. In 1861 he became a member of Laura Keene's company at her theatre in New York and succeeded Joseph Jefferson in the rôle of Asa Trenchard in a revival of Our American Cousin, appearing also while there in a number of diverse characters, including Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to Conquer and Crabtree in The School for Scandal. Jefferson, who subsequently acted with Raymond in Washington, describes him at this period as "a creator of American characters. " Later in the same season he was taking part in operatic performances in a company of which Caroline Richings was the leading member.
In 1867 he rejoined Sothern, with whom he had acted in New York, playing Asa Trenchard to that actor's Lord Dundreary in London. It was not until after a season in California that in 1873 he first acted and became permanently identified with the character of Colonel Sellers, which he acted no less than one thousand times. When he took that play to London in 1880, it disappointed his expectations by receiving little applause from English theatre-goers. Other rôles followed in which he struck a similar note of comedy, Wolfert's Roost, Fresh, the American, For Congress, In Paradise, Risks, and The Woman Hater.
He rarely appeared, after he had become a star and could select his own plays, in anything but comedies of American authorship and atmosphere, the most notable exception being his acting of Mr. Posket in Pinero's farce, The Magistrate.
For a long time he was in poor health, but he remained on the stage to the end, dying suddenly in a hotel at Evansville, Indiana, during one of his mid-western tours. His popularity both with members of his profession and with the public was attested by the fact that his funeral services at the Church of the Transfiguration ("the little Church Around the Corner") were attended by an immense crowd of mourners.
His comedy methods were limited in range, but his long face, his nimble manner, his imperturbability and his artificial seriousness, held him in high favor with multitudes to whom he seemed to be a genius of comedy acting.
His first wife was Marie E. Gordon, an actress whom he married in 1868, and from whom he was divorced. His second wife, to whom he was married April 11, 1881, was Rose Courtney Barnes, daughter of Rose Eytinge and of David Barnes.
