Kensico Vaudeville Project #: 3 Name: Anna Bylund Anderson Act: None Born: 31 July 1868, Salt Lake City Died: 26 Mar 1929, New York City This is the final resting place of a woman whose only tie to show business was her daughter, a vaudeville swimmer and high diver. Anna Susanna Bylund was born 31 July 1868 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to immigrants from Norway and Sweden. In 1890 she married George A. Anderson, Continue Reading →
Kensico Vaudeville Project #2 Name: Charles Ahearn Act: Cyclist Born: 5 April 1886 Died: 26 April 1940 Charles Ahearn was “The Racing Man” – a comedian on a bike. His fame took him to play London’s Hippodrome in 1909, where “the smartest and most amusing wheel acts America has ever sent us.” He returned to New York and took out a full-page ad in Variety to hail his triumph. Ahearn appeared with Anna Held at Continue Reading →
Kensico Vaudeville Project #1 Name: Nettie Kelley Adams Act: Singer Born: 28 Feb 1887 Died: 8 July 1934 It is appropriate that the first name to be added to the Kensico Vaudeville Project is a female singer, since women were so vital to the success of vaudeville. This is one of the graves in the National Vaudeville Association (N.V.A.) burial grounds. Nettie Adams was a star vocalist at the turn of the century. In 1901 Continue Reading →
Project Updates and Biographies are posted here. Twenty-eight miles north of Forty-second Street is Kensico Cemetery. Interred there are hundreds—perhaps more than a thousand—stage performers and associates. These men and women were onstage in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. I stumbled across perhaps three hundred old vaudeville entertainers in a little-known plot, long forgotten about, laid out in neat rows in the historic cemetery. The Kensico Vaudeville Project will tell some of their stories. Continue Reading →