Georgia Minstrels

“The great slave troupe from the Sunny South, Macon Opera House.”

“…A novel and at once interesting minstrel entertainment is given nightly, for the present at Argus Hall—a small place on Broadway, above Niblo’s. The performers are colored men and boys of every hue and age, who call themselves the Georgia Serenaders, after their native State. Their place of amusement does not differ from that made familiar in years past by the ‘counterfeit Carthegenians [sic],’ who owe their short crisp hair to the cordwainer, and their dusky hues to the chemist; but the songs they sing are genuine Southern chants, and the extravagant scenes of humor they enact are but repetitions of the realities of life in the negro cabins of Dixie’s Land. They are peculiarly earnest in their fun, too, and seem to enjoy their performances quite as thoroughly as their audiences do. The boy, ‘Al Smith,’ dances a remarkably delicate and nervous jig, and ‘Johnson’ plays the bones, while ‘Porter’ rings the tambour as those eccentric instruments never were performed upon before. These are the stars of a very clever troupe of fifteen. If they were to fit up a convenient hall for their performances, new and dusky favorites of Apollo and Momus would undoubtedly obtain, as they deserve, in extended popularity.”  

“This troupe played to a very fair house, at Argus Hall, 600 Broadway, last evening. The company is made up entirely of colored men, who were formerly slaves in Georgia, and their performances are of a character to give satisfaction to all who attend. Their musical exercises are of excellent character, and their comic olio is most provocative of laughter. Messrs. Porter and Johnson, the ‘end men,’ are fully up to the requirements made upon them, and during the evening they kept the audience in roars of laughter.”