Emma Louise Hyers

Emma Louise Hyers (1857 - circa 1901), one half of the famous Hyers Sisters. After the Gold Rush, a New York City barber named Samuel B. Hyers, 26, came west with his young wife. They settled in Sacramento, where he opened a barbershop and she devoted herself to the musical education of their gifted young daughters, Emma Louise and Anna Madah. The girls received pianoforte lessons and vocal training and were soon performing at private parties in order to gain experience in front of an audience.

On April 22, 1867, the Hyers Sisters, 9 and 11, made their professional stage debut at Sacramento's Metropolitan Theater before a reported audience of 800. They received enthusiastic reviews in the Oakland Transcript and the Elevator, San Francisco's African American newspaper.

When the girls were 14 and 16, they performed in Boston, singing mostly Verdi arias. By now their father was managing their career. "They are destined to occupy a high position in the musical world," the Boston critic wrote, citing the quality of Anna's high soprano (particularly her "faculty of reaching E-flat above the staff") and of Emma's phenomenal range, from mezzo-soprano to deep contralto.

In 1872, the Hyers Sisters performed at the World Peace Jubilee, a festival held in Boston. It was the first major musical production in the country to feature artists of many colors together on the same stage. Their career reached its apex five years later, when a theater company organized by the Hyers family produced three musical dramas starring Anna and Emma.

The shows "Out of Bondage," "The Underground Railway" and "Princess Orelia of Madagascar" were performed at San Francisco's Bush Theater. "Their production of 'Out of Bondage' (1890) was the first musical show to be produced by a black organization, thus signaling the transition from minstrelsy to black musical comedy in black entertainment."

In 1883 the sisters decided to leave their father's management. Their parents had long been estranged, mother Annie Hyers having moved away from the family home in Sacramento, first to San Francisco then to Stockton. The breach with their father came in 1881 when he admitted into the company a young woman, 'little more than a teenager,' named Mary C Reynolds, whom he married two years later. He was then 53. Reynolds, billed as Mrs. May Hyers, was also a contralto and competed with Emma Louise (her stepdaughter) for roles. As the situation became untenable and likely to generate controversy, the sisters felt it incumbent on them to leave.

At ages 17 and 19, they chose to be on their own. The sisters found new engagements for their combination of vocalists, at times in league with other managements, at other times contributing special items in companies of so called minstrels. Both sisters entered first marriages in 1883: Anna Madah to cornet player Henderson Smith and Emma Louise to bandleader George Freeman. The latter wedding took place in full view of the audience on the stage of the Baldwin Theatre in San Francisco during a performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Callender's Minstrels.

By the start of the 1890s the sisters had been performing professionally for more than twenty years and had won recognition and respect for their talents and skills. The sisters announced that they were leaving the stage after a performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1893.

Source: 'San Francisco Chronicle' by Heidi Benson and 'A History of African American Theatre' by Errol G Hill and James V Hatch

Photo Source: Scrapbook belonged to Sallie Estell Ferris and passed down to her daughter, Ella Ferris Peck. The donor said that one of these women knew George M. Cohan (1878-1942), which explains why the album contains photographic prints of various performers active at the turn-of-the-century. Cohan was an entertainer, playwright, actor and director active prior to WWI. [Historic Charlton Park Village Museum]