May C Hyers

She was born May C. Reynolds in Tioga, Pennsylvania. She was little more than a teenager when she persuaded her father to allow her to join the Hyers Sisters Act in 1882. The very next season she was married to Sam Hyers, (Anna and Emma's dad) then 53yrs old and manager of the company.

For some insane reason there is information on the web indicating that she is one of the Hyers Sisters which happens to be false. At one point she was part of the act but she was NOT Anna or Emma's sister. She was the girls (extremely young) stepmom.

NY Dramatic Mirror, Oct. 1898: "May C Hyers desires it to be understood that she is not one of the Hyers Sisters. She is the young widow and was the second wife of S.B. Hyers, father of the Hyers Sisters, and heads a company of her own."

May Hyers was a contralto singer and thus in direct competition with her step-daughter, Emma Louise. As the young wife of the company manager, it is possible that her sudden acquisition caused a rift between Sam Hyers and his daughters, by the Spring of 1883 the sisters (Anna and Emma) had left their father's company which thereafter was called by his name, the S.B. Hyers Company.

She and Sam had at least two daughters. She died February 1920.

Trivia: She was the first African American female singer to make recordings ... the records were cut as brown wax cylinders. Unfortunately, none of her recordings survived.

Source: NYPL