ONTARIO – Gary Fugate is familiar with wrinkles in time.
When the local amateur historian finds one of those passageways into the past, he follows, eager to learn more.
That’s how Fugate developed the idea to research an acting family that toured the West and Malheur County when the stagecoach was the preferred mode of travel and miners toiled on the remote high desert to find gold.
On Thursday, March 14, Fugate will be at the Vale Senior Citizens Center at 11:30 a.m. to talk about his unfinished work, “The Waldron Dynasty or 100 Years of Entertainment”
Fugate said he discovered the Waldron acting family while doing research for his first book, “El Dorado, an eastern Oregon Mining Camp.”
“I ran into an article in the Bedrock Democrat out of Baker City that told of these actors that were coming down from Portland to give plays. I thought that was interesting so I started to gather data,” said Fugate.
The Bedrock Democrat was Baker City’s first newspaper, established in 1870 by L.L. McArthur, a former Confederate army officer, and M.H. Abbott.
“They were three generations, about 100 years, and every single family member – daughters, sons, mother and father and their wives and their children – acted,” said Fugate.
“I didn’t know anything about theater until I read the newspaper article. I didn’t realize how important theater was to the miners in all the communities. They didn’t have television or anything in the form of entertainment,” said Fugate.
That meant when a troupe of actors arrived, the excitement level climbed in a mining town such as El Dorado. El Dorado was about 15 miles northwest of Brogan and boomed for a short period before it was abandoned in 1875.
“I think what surprised me was the traveling around. You’d think they’d be local but George Waldron and his wife Isabelle, traveled into small mining towns or New York City,” he said.
Fugate said the Waldron worked hard in difficult conditions to deliver Shakespeare other plays to remote places.
“There seemed to be no wall to their energy and desire to entertain. Traveling on stages, it was amazing what they’d do to put on a play,” said Fugate.
Fugate said the patriarch of the Waldron family lived an exciting life before he became an actor.
“George, who was born in New York, was a cabin boy and he traveled the world on the USS Mississippi. He traveled to Europe, Africa and China,” said Fugate.
George Waldron eventually found his way to acting and performed in several notable stock companies.
He and Isabelle were “well-known players” throughout the West, according to a 1932 article in The Brooklyn (New York) Daily Eagle.
“George Waldron starred in the West with the famous California Stock company in San Francisco, with a company in Portland, Ore., and with the noted Salt Lake Theater company, which the Mormon Church established in that city,” the newspaper reported.
Fugate said Waldron also managed the Orofino Theater in Portland and directed a theater in The Dalles.
Fugate said the Waldrons first came to El Dorado to perform in 1873. George and Isabella raised two children, including Charles Waldron Jr., who continued the family acting legacy into the 1940s and Georgia Isabel, often called Bell.
“They were this little dynasty that existed and acted. They performed with famous actors of the old West like Laura Keen,” said Fugate.
Keen, a British stage actress, was the lead in the play “Our American Cousin,” in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1865. During her performance in Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln. She cradled the dying president’s head in her lap.
The last surviving Waldron family actor was John Emery, who died in 1964. Emery’s career spanned 40 years and included theater, movies and television.
“How many people will be interested? I don’t know. I don’t expect it (the book) to be a money-maker. But I want it to be very interesting for people,” said Fugate.
News tip? Contact reporter Pat Caldwell at [email protected]
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