Sol Smith Russell was born in Brunswick, Mo. , the son of Charles Elmer Russell, keeper of a small country store, who had been at one time an itinerant physician and preacher, and of Louisa Mathews, daughter of Edwin Mathews, a teacher of music in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was named for the actor, Sol Smith, who was his uncle by marriage. During his boyhood and youth, he lived with his parents in St. Louis, Mo. , and Jacksonville, Ill.
After the outbreak of the Civil War Russell ran away from home and remained with a Union regiment for several months as a drummer boy, not being allowed to enlist because of his youth and the absence of formal parental consent. His departure from home, however, was the beginning of a long professional career on the stage. Joining a company at the Defiance Theatre in Cairo, Ill. , he made slow advancement from small beginnings; he often appeared in a variety of parts in one evening, besides singing between the acts and drumming in the orchestra.
This opening engagement struck the keynote of his career. He could turn his mind, his hands, his agile body to almost anything that would amuse an audience. Soon afterwards he was acting and singing his songs in stock companies and on tours through the Middle West; he joined the Peak family of bell ringers, and in 1868 the Berger family, giving character bits and songs, and proving so popular with the Bergers that they were later advertised as the "Berger Family and Sol Smith Russell Concert Troupe. "
After a season in 1867 with the stock company at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, he spent three seasons touring in his own monologue entertainment. His first New York engagement was at Lina Edwin's Theatre in 1871; and after a season of twenty-six weeks at the Olympic Theatre, nineteen weeks at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston, and various other engagements, he joined Augustin Daly's company at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York, making his debut there on August 25, 1874, as Mr. Peabody in What Could She Do, or Jealousy. The theatre records show that he appeared in three other characters that season, Trip in The School for Scandal, the present Mrs. Peters in Moorcroft, or the Double Wedding, by Bronson Howard, and Colander in Masks or Faces, written by Tom Taylor and Charles Reade and later the basis for Reade's novel, Peg Woffington.
He made his first starring appearance in 1880 in Edgewood Folks, a comedy pasticcio designed by J. E. Brown with the assistance of William Seymour especially to fit him, in which he sang a number of songs and made ten changes of costume. After a season in 1884-85 as leading comedian at the Boston Museum, he continued starring without further interruption in a succession of comedies of homely life, his roles inspired by and invested with his own quaint personality. They included Felix McKusick, by J. E. Brown; Pa, by C. W. Walters; Bewitched and Peaceful Valley, by E. E. Kidder; The Tale of a Coat, rewritten to order for him by Dion Boucicault, and a dire failure; April Weather, by E. E. Kidder; and A Bachelor's Romance, by Martha Morton.
Once in a while he escaped from these characters to act in his own inimitable and characteristic manner, such old-time stage favorites as Dr. Pangloss in The Heir-at-Law, and Bob Acres in The Rivals; and during the season of 1897-98 he made an especial feature of a triple bill consisting of Mr. Valentine's Christmas, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Spitfire. He was an intimate friend of James Whitcomb Riley, whose poems he recited with humor and pathos.
He made his last appearance on the stage in Chicago, January 7, 1901, in the title role of The Hon. John Grigsby, a comedy by Charles Klein. After a lingering illness with locomotor ataxia, he died in Washington, having acquired a considerable fortune through hard work and thrift. Tall and slight in appearance, deliberate in action, he had a dry, crackling comedy manner that was irresistible in its appeal to an audience.
Russell was well known comedian in United States. He was noted for his kindness, gentleness, and his insistence on playing wholesome and elevating roles, as well as his ability to make audiences laugh and sometimes cry. His most prominent work was the role of Mr. Peabody in "What Could She Do, or Jealousy", a version of Emile Augier's Gabrielle.
Russell's first wife was Louise Berger. After her death he married Alice M. Adams (daughter of William T. Adams, known to boy readers as Oliver Optic). They had two children.
