Frank Brower

Francis "Frank" Marion Brower (November 20, 1823 – June 4, 1874) was an American blackface performer active in the mid-19th century. Brower began performing blackface song-and-dance acts in circuses and variety shows when he was 13. He eventually introduced the bones to his act, helping to popularize it as a blackface instrument. Brower teamed with various other performers, forming his longest association with banjoist Dan Emmett beginning in 1841. Brower earned a reputation as a gifted dancer. In 1842, Brower and Emmett moved to New York City. They were out of work by January 1843, when they teamed up with Billy Whitlock and Richard Pelham to form the Virginia Minstrels. The group was the first to perform a full minstrel show as a complete evening's entertainment. Brower pioneered the role of the endman.

After a successful tour in the British Isles, Brower returned to the United States and teamed with Emmett and other blackface performers for a time. In the 1850s, he left minstrelsy to work in the Tom shows based on Uncle Tom's Cabin. He returned to minstrelsy briefly as the decade closed and nostalgia for the old minstrel show came into fashion. In 1867, Brower retired from show business and opened a saloon.

Francis Marion Brower was born on November 20, 1823, in Baltimore, Maryland. Brower began his career at age 13, first performing at Dick Meyer's Third and Chestnut Streets Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Brower claimed to have learned to dance from black people, and he took to doing song-and-dance blackface performances in circuses and theatres. For the 1840 season, Brower toured with the Cincinnati Circus Company, paired with a banjoist named Ferguson. The two became the stars of the show.

In 1841, Brower teamed up with banjoist Dan Emmett, who had been playing banjo in the circus orchestra. Brower took up the playing of the bones, making him one of the earliest to marry the instrument with blackface theater. The following season, Brower and Emmett toured with Raymond and Waring's Circus. The duo became well known, and Brower earned a reputation as a first-tier dancer. Brower's introduction of acrobatic leaps to the stage caught on with other blackface performers. His act was well enough known that Master Juba (William Henry Lane) did an impression of Brower dancing (an 1845 playbill for the Ethiopian Minstrels, with whom Juba was touring, lists Brower as the fifth ranked dancer in Juba's show).

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