A photograph of a White girl and boy standing by a sign. The words that are visible advertise “Terry’s Big Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
Back: the black backing where the card was ripped out of an album adheres to the back of the photo. A note from the dealer states that “Terry’s was out of Sioux City, Iowa,” and the caption on the album page, since destroyed, said “1921 and Iowa, and listed a town ending with “ville”
The dealer wrote: “An Iowan Uncle Tom’s Cabin Company
First organized in 1890 by O. Q. Setchell, Terry’s was headquarted in Little Sioux, Iowa, for almost three decades (the name Terry, borrowed from Setchell’s brother-in-law, Fred Terry, seemed easier to remember than Setchell). At first it relied on horse-drawn wagons, then after 1903 it traveled by train, and in the second half of the 1920s it toured in trucks and cars. It showed exclusively in the warm weather, playing under tents. Most of its performances were in the upper midwest, but it did occasionally get as far from Iowa as the northeast.
Mrs. Dickey, who played Topsy for many years, also managed the show after 1927, by which time it had moved to Aurora, Illinois. African American John Beecher joined the company in 1903 as a roustabout, but within a few weeks he began playing Uncle Tom; known in Little Sioux as “Bojangles,” he stayed with the company for over 25 years.
Before organizing the company, Setchell was a band master in Barnum’s Circus, which may help explain the unusual costumes and characters you can see in the cast photos (see details above). Apparently, between acts of Uncle Tom the company performed minstrel and vaudeville routines. Under another name, the company also produced Ten Nights in a Barroom, the most popular of all temperance dramas.”
The dealer felt that the card was not 1912 but 1921 in Iowa. He said that most photos in the album were from California although many were from Iowa, and some from other states.