Born in Axemann, Centre County, Pennsylvania, Christopher Heverly, known as “Jack” or “Kit” when he was young, gained nationwide fame and the title of “King of Minstrel.” According to one account, an ill-advised tailor’s shear, thrown at the head of his boss may have started Heverly in his illustrious career.

A post in the Penns Valley Past and Present Facebook Page dated March 20, 2025, carries an undated newspaper article that Haverly, born in 1837, was a tailor’s apprentice in the shop of William McClellan in Bellefonte. The flying shears earned young Heverly time in the Centre County Jail.

According to the article, after his jail time was served, Mr. McClellan took Heverly home, fed him dinner, and invited him to spend the night. As that newspaper account goes, the next morning, Mr. McClellan closed his shop for the day, and he and Heverly headed to Spruce Creek, the nearest point of railroad service to Bellefonte. Giving the former apprentice a ticket and money, McClellan put Heverly on a train, and the young man headed west to seek his fame and fortune.

But a different story from an 1883 Harrisburg newspaper provided additional information on Heverly’s life, who was being taken to task by other publications for his financial woes at that time. The June 12, 1883, article gave this account of Haverly’s departure from Bellefonte as a young man:

“Jack's father and grandfather were axe-makers working for Harvey Mann, a famous axe manufacturer a few miles south of Bellefonte, where a brother of the wrecked manager is employed at the present time. Jack was considered "not strong enough for the axe business," and therefore was sent to Bellefonte to learn tailoring, where he was an apprentice to a well-known tailor of that ancient borough. With little other than the education received in the public schools of Spring Township, young Haverly, when he crossed his legs on the tailor board could barely read, write, and cipher in addition, subtraction, and division. The writer of this brief sketch frequently sees Jack stitching pantaloons for men like Andrew G. Curtin, Judge Burnside, James T. Hale, General Beaver [then a young law student], and other worthies of the borough.

 Jack was an unassuming apprentice boy without the least indication of genius of any kind, who walked three miles to his country home in the neighborhood of the axe factory every Saturday night and returned again Sunday to resume his work on Monday on the tailor's board. One day, (so runs the story,) a son of his master grossly affronted and rudely beat young Haverly. Jack burned to "get even" with his tormentor and oppressor. He made two resolutions, to whip the son of his master, the other to leave his master's employment. Arranging his plans accordingly, he removed his clothing, fixed an evening for the encounter with his enemy, met him and whipped him severely, and then left Bellefonte precipitately.”

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“Colonel” Jack Haverly was one of a new wave of theater troupe owners and managers who had not entered the profession as a performer himself. He borrowed the techniques of famous showmen like P. T. Barnum to promote his theater companies. In the late 1870s, he turned his eye to the lifeless minstrel show, observing that other entertainments, such as stage plays, operas, and variety shows, had "increased and enlarged their dimensions until their proportions and attractive qualities [had] appeared unlimited." Minstrelsy, on the other hand, had remained much as it had been in the days of the Virginia Minstrels and Ethiopian Serenaders. [2]

His answer would be a company of minstrels "that for extraordinary excellence, merit, and magnitude [would] astonish and satisfy the most exacting amusement seeker in the world."

Haverly's success in minstrelsy allowed him to finance other ventures. At the height of his fortune, he owned and managed three minstrel troupes and four comic theater groups, in addition to three theaters in New York and one in each of Brooklyn, Chicago, and San Francisco, three mining and milling companies, as well as stock in many others. Haverly's stock investments did not perform as he had wished, and by the end of 1877, he was in debt by as much as $104,000. However, he tried to skirt bankruptcy with another gamble.

With four minstrel companies as his raw materials, he created a single troupe, dubbed Haverly’s United Mastodon Minstrels. He flooded New York with posters and newspaper advertisements twice the size of the ads placed by other troupes.

Haverly's shows were different, and he took every opportunity to emphasize this in his advertisements. He stressed the high costs of production. He continued to purchase minstrel troupes throughout the 1870s and 80s and to absorb them into the Mastodons. The troupe had over 100 members at one point.

In 1878, Haverly entered the market of black minstrelsy and bought Charles Callender’s Original Georgia Minstrels. The huge troupe was successful, but Haverly found it difficult to manage both them and the Mastodons. He sold the Georgia Minstrels in 1882. 

Haverly took his minstrels to London for a lengthy engagement. Newspaper accounts say on four different occasions he made and lost fortunes in the theatrical and gold mining businesses.

Jack Haverly died in a Salt Lake City Hospital from heart disease on September 28^th, 1901. He is buried in Mount Peace Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

DISCLAIMER: This story is meant for historical reference, and I do not support the racist connotations associated with blackface theater.