All the world's a stage: Spotlight on Broadway Actor Edwin Nicander

Nicander Edwin Rau
date unknown, possibly 1920s
Source: NY Public Library

Edwin Nicander

(23 Dec 1876 - 1 Jan 1951) 

        Just before Christmas in 1876, Nicander Edwin Rau was born in New York City to Arnold H. Rau Sr. and Elizabeth "Elise" Dotzert Rau. He was their third and final son. His father Arnold (10 Aug 1843 - 8 Jun 1930) had emigrated from the Prussian state of Germany in the mid-1850s, while his mother Elise (8 Feb 1850 - 7 Jun 1926) was born in New York City to two German immigrants, Johann Georg "George" Dotzert (~ Apr 1825 - 10 Dec 1901) and Elizabeth Kraemer Dotzert (1828 - 5 Jan 1898). Edwin was my great grandmother Margretha "Margaret" Dotzert Speer's (31 Jul 1890 - 25 Mar 1967) first cousin.

Margaret Dotzert Speer, circa 1912

Edwin's father Arnold was a hotel restaurateur, a profession which was in line with the profession of his father-in-law George and perhaps how he met Edwin's mother Elise. 

In 1880, the family was living at 83 West 11th Street in the West Village. This exact street address doesn't exist anymore, but based on the current street view, the location was likely part of the large brick building on the corner.

Corner of West 11th and 6th Ave, West Village

In June 1887 when Edwin was 10, Arnold Sr. applies for a passport along with his three sons. They note that he has a dark complexion, prominent nose and high forehead and stands a modest 5 ft 6. 

Passport Application dated 9th Jun 1887 NYC

A short while later we can see Mr. Rau traveling with his three sons, Arnold Jr. (12 Jan 1870 - ?), Horatio Washington Arnold (22 Feb 1872 - ?) and Nicander Edwin (aka Edwin), as well as one Miss Rau (perhaps Elise or perhaps Mr. Rau's sister Caroline) on the SS Servia of the Cunard line. The Servia went into service in 1881 and ran between Liverpool and New York until 1901, when it was sold for scrap. It was taken apart the following year. SS Servia is considered to be the first modern passenger ocean liner and was quite luxurious for the time (the first with electricity on board!) so we can infer that the Rau family was doing quite well in the restaurant business.

Cover of Passenger List for Voyage
18 Jun 1887

S. S. Servia model Science Museum South Kensington
Source: Hugh Llewelyn, Flickr

No family records of this trip exist so it's hard to know exactly why the Raus headed to England that summer, though it is likely they traveled to Germany to see relatives after they arrived.

By 1900, Edwin and his brother are living with their parents at 13 Bank Street in the West Village. This historic Greek revival brownstone was built in 1852. All three sons are single and listed as "restaurant keeper" along with their father. However, Edwin had taken up acting about 6 years prior based on several newspaper records I've unearthed. In a somewhat bizarre coincidence, it turns out that infamous Hollywood producer and rapist Harvey Weinstein apparently bought 13 Bank Street in 2006 and then listed it for sale for $25.6 million dollars in 2018 after his legal troubles began.

Source: Town & Country magazine

The first citation of an actor called "Edwin Nicander" can be found in a Louisville, Kentucky newspaper on 27 Jan 1896. Young Edwin is playing a character called Gustave Alphonse (and received 4th billing) in a play called "The Vendetta". It's clear from the article that this was a traveling acting troupe, headed by W.R. Ogden, which moved around the country, as the article cites performance delays due to a train mishap coming from Cincinnati. 

The Courier Journal, 27 Jan 1896

But when did young Edwin begin acting? A later article in the Boston Globe says that he's a six year veteran of the stage, which would put his debut around 1894 when he was 17 or 18. It does look as though there was a little age flubbing going on already though, as Edwin should have been 23 almost 24 at the time the article was published.

The Boston Globe, 11 Nov 1900

There's a 20 year gap in the Rau family's history as I have yet to find any of them in the 1910 census, but the early 1900s show quite an uptick in newspaper articles reporting on Edwin. Between 1896 and his death in 1951, there were 1295 newspaper articles with the name Edwin Nicander. I have yet to confirm they are all about him about him, but by 1907 there are mentions of him on Broadway and the peak of the articles corresponds to 1900-1929, the era he was most active in the theater.

Edwin at 26 years old
Source: Evening Express, 24 Nov 1903

By the 1920 census, Edwin lists his profession as theater actor and he is still living with his parents, aunt Caroline and unmarried brother Horatio in College Point, Queens. In 1930, he resided at another Queens location with his very elderly father and aunt Caroline as well as a servant, still listing his profession as stage actor. However, based on the significant drop in newspaper articles about him by 1930 it appears the roles had mostly dried up for 53 year old Edwin. So much so in fact, that when he began appearing in his last Broadway play in 1938 (Kiss the Boys Goodbye) a journalist wrote about him having an 8 year lull! He was noted as a "short, serious, pleasant little man". Oof.

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 Oct 1939

In spite of his likely industry forced retirement, Edwin still listed himself as a "theatre actor" in the 1940 census and lived with his widowed brother Arnold Jr in Queens. They remain living together in 1950 in Queens, but Edwin's entry states that he is "unable to work". The entry also notes that he never married. This census was taken on 18 Apr 1950 and Edwin would be dead in less than 9 months time.

Source: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 3 Jan 1951

It's hard to know exactly how many shows that Edwin acted in by the time he retired from the stage in 1939, but the Playbill website cites 29 Broadway shows between 1910 and 1938 and IMDB has a few earlier shows dating back to 1900. Although I don't know exactly when his brothers' Arnold and Horatio passed, I suspect it was before Edwin as only his nephew Thornwaldsen Arnold Rau (19 Sep 1889 - 26 Dec 1956) is mentioned in Edwin's obituary. T. Arnold had two sons, one who died while in college and the other who appears to have remained a lifelong bachelor like his uncle Edwin, thereby ending this line of the Dotzert family tree.

"Jack Straw", 1908
Source: Manuel Palomino Arjona, Flickr

"Good Gracious Annabelle", 1916
Source: Museum of the City of New York

"Buy, Buy, Baby", 1926
Source: Museum of the City of New York

NOTE: Edwin's last play "Kiss the Boys Goodbye" was popular enough that it was made into a Hollywood movie in 1941 starring Don Ameche and Mary Martin and the title song was wildly popular as well.

The Origin of Our Name

In 1922 when my grandfather John was born, his mother Charlotte was not married. At his birth, she listed him as having the last name Philipps, though he wouldn't know that until 1950. 

In June 1925, Charlotte was living with her mother Margaret, her two brothers and Grandpa Jack, though he was listed as John King. He's also listed as son of Margaret, which was obviously not true since she was 68 year old at the time.

King Family, 1925 New York state census

By January 1926, Charlotte had married Lester Rothrock. They moved to New Jersey and later Charlotte gave birth to two more sons, William "Bill" and Richard "Rich". Charlotte and Lester presented Jack as their mutual son and he used the name Rothrock. Later when the truth came out, Charlotte would tell Grandpa Jack that she selected the last name for his birth certificate because it was a common last name in the neighborhood she lived in when she got pregnant. She told him she chose it because she wanted to deflect from the fact that his father had been a married man. She used his real first name Gilbert, but chose a last name she was familiar with. 

Our last name is Philipps, which is an unusual spelling variant. I have always assumed Charlotte had guessed at how to spell the more common Phillips and simply made a mistake. But today when I was looking over old NYC records because of the new free digital index that went live this week, I noticed this in the 1915 state census.

King & Philipps Families, 1915 New York state census

The King family lived next to a Philipps family - matriarch Sarah Philipps with two sons, potential suitors for Charlotte (who was actually 20 at the time of the census)! The spelling of our last name was no doubt an intentional nod to this family. The irony is that 66 years after this census, Charlotte's second great granddaughter via Jack would be born as Sarah Philipps. Kismet, perhaps?

Charlotte Helena Mary King Rothrock, 1915 @ Coney Island

Ethnicity Guestimates

Probably the biggest draw of direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies is their ethnicity or ancestry estimates. But if you've ever tested with multiple companies or known someone who has, you might have noticed that the results are not the same from company to company. So let's get this out of the way now - those ethnicity estimates are just estimates and likely to be wrong. You cannot be certain of the geographic origin of your ancestors by looking at a single DTC genetic test result. That doesn't mean that the information can't still be useful or interesting - but more on that another day. For those who haven't bought a test yet, let's use my results as an example to understand why these discrepancies in ethnicity estimates exist. I have tested on both 23andMe & Ancestry, as well as uploaded my 23andMe raw data to the MyHeritage database (which is free).

23andMe Results

According to 23andMe, I'm 46.5% British/Irish, 17.4% French/German, 7% Broadly Northern European (which also would be associated with being British/Irish and French/German), 24.5% Italian, 0.5% Greek/Balkan and 2.8% North West Asian (split between Anatolian aka Turkish and Cypriot).

Ancestry Results

According to Ancestry, I'm 40% Irish, 19% English/Northwestern European (which they say includes parts of France, Belgium and the Netherlands), 19% Scottish, 11% French, 7% Northern Italian, 2% Cypriot, 1% Middle Eastern, and 1% Germanic. 

MyHeritage Results (using 23andMe data)

According to MyHeritage, I'm 27.5% North/Western European (which encompasses France and Germany), 21.8% Irish/Scottish/Welsh, 18.7% English, 14.2% Greek/Southern Italian, 9.9% Italian, 2.2% Balkan, and 5.7% North African. So what gives? 

One of the first things to notice is that each company carves up the globe differently. They have decided to cluster geographic areas differently, which can account for a big chunk of the ethnicity estimate differences. For example, 23andMe doesn't separate Scotland or Wales from their British/Irish estimate, but Ancestry lumps English ancestry with Northwestern Europe, while MyHeritage is considering North/Western Europe to include the same places as Ancestry but also France and Germany which both 23andMe and Ancestry separate out. Since there's not an easy way to compare the percentage of my DNA associated with single countries directly between the 3 companies, let's just count the percentage of my DNA that seems to have come from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, and Germany: 23andMe says that's 71%, Ancestry says that's 90%, and MyHeritage says that's 68%. Now we have a better agreement between two of the companies, but it's still not a concordance. So how does that compare to what I know about my family after more than 25 years of paper genealogy research?

Each person has 4 biological grandparents and will inherit roughly 25% of their DNA from each grandparent (NOTE: it is possible to inherit slightly more or less DNA from your grandparents due to the random shuffling of DNA that occurs when parents make their egg and sperm). My father's father was born to two people who were half English and half Irish, so he was likely 50% English and 50% Irish. My father's mother was born to a 100% German mother and an English/Welsh/Dutch/French father so she was likely 50% German and a 50% mix of the other 4 places. My mother's father was born to a Scottish/Irish father and an English/Irish/German/Dutch mother. My mother's mother was born to first-generation Italian Americans - all their family that I can trace to back to the mid-1850s lived in Southern Italy. This grandmother's DNA on both 23andMe and Ancestry suggests she's about 80% Italian and the rest is a mix of Greek/Cypriot or North West Asian.

For simplicity's sake, let's just focus on a small bit of my ancestry - the German/French/Dutch bit. We can guess that my dad is about 25% German and that I, in turn, should have gotten about 12.5% German DNA from those ancestors, but I also could have inherited some German DNA from my mom's side of the family, as well as French and Dutch DNA from both sides. This means that estimates from 23andMe and MyHeritage are probably pretty accurately gauging those populations. But Ancestry saying I'm more French than German doesn't make a lot of sense based on oral family history and my paper trail. It was interesting to me, however, that each company was capable of confirming some of the locations I know my ancestors to have emigrated from: Ancestry notes an association with Roscommon in Ireland, 23andMe identified Campania in Italy, and MyHeritage linked me to Aberdeen in Scotland.

So why are there sometimes significant differences between companies when your DNA obviously doesn't change? It's largely due to the fact that each company uses its own proprietary method of assigning DNA segments to different geographic locations in the first place. However, each method relies on a similar approach. Basically, the company will select a group of people currently living in a particular geographic location who are deemed to have "pure" DNA for that area to serve as a reference for all the people who test with the company. If you are found to have DNA that matches with a particular reference dataset, they assign that segment to match that geographic region, and then they tally all your DNA segments to give you the ethnicity estimate. Since each company selects its reference populations differently and clusters geographic areas differently, it is impossible to get complete concordance between companies. If you want to learn more about these methods, check out this on 23andMe, this on Ancestry and this on MyHeritage. (And if you really want to get into the science, read the white papers from 23andMe and Ancestry - I couldn't locate one for MyHeritage. Some of the reference sample sets are shockingly small.) And if you need more helpful visuals on this topic, check out the video from Vox below.