Overview
Collection of photographs, scripts, musical instruments, and ephemera documenting the blackface minstrel act, McIntyre & Heath.
Dates
- Creation: circa 1870-1960
Language of Materials
English
Conditions Governing Access
Open for research.
A portion of this collection is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.
Extent
.5 linear feet (5 boxes)Collection includes photographs, printed and manuscript scripts, manuscript music, business papers, a few letters, ephemera, a pair of leather shoes, a banjo ukulele, and a violin. Some photographs and an album come from the Heath family.
Biographical / Historical
James McIntyre and Thomas Heath met in San Antonio (Tex.) in 1874. Both men had been performing since their teenage years; they formed an act in which McIntyre played a stable-boy named Alexander Hambletonian and Heath, an entertainer named Henry Jones who routinely outwitted Alexander. Their act was influential in its time; W.C. Fields worked for them early in his career, and Al Jolson and others began to present African-American music to a broader audience.
The duo was notable for having introduced the buck and wing dance, an African-American forerunner of tap dancing, as well as the stock minstrel character of the blackface tramp clown. The latter character may have made use of oversized shoes made to resemble bare black feet (as are present in this collection).
Arrangement
Arranged in five series: Photographs; Scripts; Business records; Ephemera; and Artifacts.
Physical Location
b, Harvard Depository
Custodial History
Collection is said by the seller to have come ultimately from the estate of Thomas Heath.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
2019MT-119. Purchased from Walkabout Books with funds from the Francis W. Hatch Book Fund, 2019 February.
Processing Information
Processed by Melanie Wisner, 2019.
Topical
Subject
- McIntyre & Heath (Organization)
- Title
- McIntyre & Heath Minstrels collection, circa 1870-1960 (MS Thr 1914): Guide
- Status
- completed
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard University
- Date
- 2019 March 1
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou03107
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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