Laura Keene

Actress Laura Keene had become a major theatrical attraction in New York City since her arrival in the United States in 1852. By the start of the Civil War, she had also demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for business, becoming the country’s first female theater manager. Our American Cousin was one of her long-running successes, which she brought to the nation’s capital in the spring of 1865. She was playing the lead role in that production the night that President Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre.
This image shows Keene about the time she became a theater manager in 1855.