ERNEST HOGAN

Hogan, Ernest (1860-12 May 1909), minstrel show and vaudeville entertainer and songwriter, was born Reuben Crowder (or Crowders) in the African American "Shake Rag" district of Bowling Green, Kentucky. Nothing is known of his family or early youth, but by his early teens he was supporting himself as an actor, singer, dancer, and comedian. He appeared with a traveling "Tom show"--a repertory company presenting Uncle Tom's Cabin on the road--as a young child, and he was a member of such traveling tent shows as Pringle's Georgia Minstrels in his middle teens. A versatile youth, he excelled in all aspects of minstrelsy, and by 1891 he had found a distinct theatrical identity. In about that year he took the stage name of Hogan because the Irish were the most successful comedians of the time, and with a partner founded a company of his own, Hogan and Eden's Minstrels, in Chicago. Within read more...