Contract for a Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels performance: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

A contract for Haverly's "Genuine Colored" Mastodon Minstrels to perform at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. The contract is a long folio leaf, with pre-printed fields that have been filled out by hand. An edit, by hand in ink, adds: "Genuine Colored" at the top of the document, which was signed by the troupe's manager, Charles Frohman. This contract stipulates that the minstrels were to get a share of the house take, based on the receipts at the door, a common practice even today. Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels was a black-face minstrel troupe created in 1877. The back of the contract has an inscription that gives a name and a date.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 1879
• Created by: Unidentified
• Signed by: Charles Frohman, American, 1856 - 1915
• Subject of: Haverly's United Mastodon Minstrels, American, founded 1877
• Subject of: J. H. Haverly, American, 1837 - 1901
• Type: contract documents
• Medium: ink on paper
• Dimensions: H x W: 14 x 8 1/2 in. (35.6 x 21.6 cm)
• Place depicted: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Business
• Topic: Minstrel (Music)
• Topic: Stereotypes
• Topic: Theatre
• Object number: 2012.46.64
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The underlying object's rights statement is: No Known Copyright Restrictions Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.