Louisa Lane Drew (January 10, 1820 – August 31, 1897) was an English-born famous British American actress and theatre owner . manager and an ancestor of the prominent Barrymore-Drew acting family.[1] Professionally, she was often billed and known as Mrs. John Drew.
Louisa Lane was born in London, England, (of the United Kingdom), the daughter of Eliza Trentner (1796–1887), a singer and actress, and Thomas Frederick Lane (1796–1825), an actor and theatre manager.[2][3][4][5] Louisa and her mother came to America when she was six years old. She proved to be a child prodigy playing five different adult roles within one play at the age of eight in 1828. As a young woman and strolling player, her theatrical travels took her, her mother and half sisters as far away as Jamaica in the West Indies islands chain and Caribbean Sea, by sailing ship, where one of her step-fathers died. She returned to the United States in 1847 to support the elder Junius Brutus Booth (1796-1852).[2] She appeared in several plays with both him and his youngest son, John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865), who would later engage in a conspiracy and stalk, later assassinate 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865, served 1861-1865), at the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865).[6]
She and her third husband John Drew (1827-1862), were the parents of Louisa Drew (Mendum) (1851–1888) an occasional or sometimes actress, John Drew Jr. (1853-1927), and Georgie Drew (Barrymore) (1856-1893). She had no known children from her first two marriages. The Drews owned the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they staged performances, and she managed the business. The Arch Street was a competitor theatre of the still standing Walnut Street Theatre, also in Philadelphia. After her husband's 1862 death, Mrs. Drew adopted a baby boy and named him Sidney Drew. She was the grandmother through her daughter Georgie of John Barrymore (1882-1942), Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959), and Lionel Barrymore (1878-1954), all prominent actors / actresses of the thespian Barrymore-Drew family. Her other grandchildren were Georgie Drew Mendum,[7][8][9] Edmund Mendum, Louise Drew, and S. Rankin Drew. She is also the great-great-grandmother of another generation of the extended acting family, current actress, Drew Barrymore (born 1975).
The historic Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia that the Barrymores owned and managed, was demolished in 1936, but the other Walnut Street Theatre still stands in Philadelphia, as one of the nation's oldest theatres.[13][14]
