Rufus C. Somerby

Who was Rufus C. Somerby?

Rufus C. Somerby was an entertainer, showman, and panoramist in the mid-nineteenth century, and one of a very few men of his profession to leave behind any memoirs or account of his activities. He is chiefly known through a series of articles published in 1903 and 1904 in The Billboard, the ancestor of today's "Billboard Magazine," which at the time was a trade journal for circus, carnival, and theatrical performers and managers. Somerby operated several moving panoramas under the management of Boston's George K. Goodwin, including a panorama of "Dr. Kane's Arctic Voyages," and also was involved in mechanical theatres. He worked as an agent for P.T. Barnum, bringing one such mechanical theatre, "Thiodon's Theatre of Arts," from the United Kingdom to the United States for an exhibition at Barnum's American Museum. Later, after this mechanical show was completed his run, he oversaw its re-making into two smaller such theatres, one of which had its figures re-painted to as to present not "The Battle of Balaclava" in the Crimean War, but the assault on Fort Sumter, by a panorama broker in Providence, Rhode Island.

Somerby may possibly have served in the U.S. Civil War; a man of that name was a lieutenant in both Companies "A" and "B" of the Ninth Kentucky Infantry Regiment. In any case, after the war he returned to the show trade, working with the well-known Boston actor and theatrical agent, Edward P. Kendall as part of a variety troupe, established in 1867, which toured the country. Other members of this troupe included John Maguire, Barney McNulty, C. Amory Bruce, L. M. W. Steere and D. B. Hodges. Somerby also headed his own bills as a professional lecturer; in 1877, there is a record of his operating his own Fair, which included himself as "graphic lecturer", O-car Shaffer, a "facial contortionist," Shaffer's wife the singer Louise Shaffer, and a player of the "musical glasses".