OBITUARIES, AMERICAN. (FISHER FLAOO.) 



541 



father and mother, playing with other parts Norval 

 and Sir Peter Teazle for five years with great 

 financial success. In 1822 she returned to Drury 

 Lane in the part of Little Pickle in " The Spoiled 

 Child," and remained at that theater as a regular 

 member of the company for three years. In 1827 

 she came to the United States, landing Sept. 1 of 

 that year at the Battery. New York, from a sailing 

 vessel, when that locality was the fashionable quarter 

 of the city. A house in the Bowery near Grand 

 Street had been taken for her, and there she lived 

 with her father and mother while she played her 

 first engagement in New York at the Old Park 

 Theater, which stood on the ground now occupied 

 by the " Daily News " office, opposite the Post Office. 

 Her first 'appearance was made Sept. 11, 1827, as 

 Albina Mandeville in the comedy of " The Will." 

 Her success here was a repetition of the astonishing 

 1 Urore which had attended her London appearances. 

 Though she was now sixteen years of age, she was 

 small and appeared younger, and was therefore still 

 considered an infant prodigy. From New York she 

 journeyed to Philadelphia, Boston, and the cities of 

 the South and West. In addition to the characters 

 already mentioned she played Clari in " The Maid 

 of Milan," Maria in " The Actress of all Work," 

 Gertrude in " The Loan of a Lover," Cherubino in 

 " The Marriage of Figaro," Priscilla Tomboy in 

 ' The Romp," Letitia Hardy in " The Belle's Strat- 

 agem," the Four Mowbrays in " Old and Young," 

 and Juliana in " The Honeymoon." In Baltimore 

 in 1828 President Adams attended her performances 

 and at a Twelfth Night where she was present in 

 one of the first houses of the city she was chosen as 

 the Queen of the Revels and had Louis Napoleon, 

 afterward the Emperor Napoleon III, for her partner. 

 By this time she had begun to be an earnest and 

 studious woman, and when in 1834 she married 

 James Gaspard Maeder, a well-known and favorite 

 musician, she was determined, although in the pos- 

 session of an independent fortune, to devote herself 

 to the best work of the drama. She was successive- 

 ly attached to most of the best companies of the 

 United States. Charlotte Cushman, Forrest, the 

 elder Wallack, the elder Booth, Edmond Connor, 

 Hamblin, Charles Kean, and James H. Hackett are 

 a few of the names of those whom she ably sup- 

 ported in the principal female roles of their reper- 

 tories. One of her interesting recollections of 

 youth in America is the fact of her having played 

 with Thomas Apthorpe Cooper and George Freder- 

 ick Cooke. She played Susanna in " The Marriage," 

 with Charlotte Cushman as the Countess; Violante 

 to the Don Felix of the elder Wallack, in " The 

 Wonder " ; Phoebe to Master Burke's Paul Pry ; 

 Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford (at different times) to 

 Ilackett's Falstaff, as well as Ophelia to his Ham- 

 let. On the stage of the Old Park Theater she 

 was the original of more than half a hundred char- 

 acters new to -the American stage, among which 

 were Clara Douglas in " Money," Caroline in " The 

 Four Sisters," Duchess de Torrenneva in " Faint 

 Heart ne'er Won Fair Lady," Madame Germaine 

 in " Home, Sweet Home," Victoria in " The Invin- 

 cibles," Rosetta in " The Alpine Maid," and Nell 

 Gwynne in the drama of that name. She was also 

 intrusted with the interpretation of the parts origi- 

 nally presented by Madame Vestris in London. 

 Mrs. Maeder and her husband purchased and occu- 

 pied a handsome home in Albany, N. Y.. where 

 they lived for many years while she was filling en- 

 gagements throughout the country, and where they 

 were surrounded by a large family of children. 

 Financial reverses, from the failure of a New York 

 bank, in which most of her money was invested, 

 imbittered Clara Fisher's later life with the cares 

 of poverty. Yet such was the gentleness of her 



nature that she never lost the peculiar charm of 

 sunny good nature and the sparkling vivacity which 

 constituted the magnetic power of her work on the 

 stage. Mrs. Maeder continued to act and was em- 

 ployed in many different companies until 1889, 

 when she definitely retired after seventy-two years 

 of active work, during which she had been a leading 

 figure of the English drama in two continents. She 

 made her last public appearance on the stage at 

 Baltimore, Md., in the character of Mrs. Jeremiah 

 Joblots in " The Lottery of Love," under the man- 

 agement of Augustin Daly, of whose company she 

 had been for three years a member. The Dunlap 

 Society of New York in 1897 published Mrs. Maeder s 

 autobiography. 



I'iad. Henry, civil engineer, born near Heidel- 

 berg, Germany, in 1824; died in Pittsburg, Pa., 

 June 20, 1898. He entered the service of the Ger- 

 man Government when twenty-two years old, and 

 was detailed to duty in connection with the work 

 of improving the Rhine. Three years later he 

 joined the revolutionists with the rank of captain 

 of engineers, and constructed defensive works. On 

 the suppression of the uprising he fled to the United 

 States with a sentence to death against him, and on 

 landing in New York supported himself for a year 

 as draughtsman in an architect's office. In 1850 

 he was appointed assistant engineer of the New 

 York and Lake Erie Railroad ; in the following 

 year made the survey between Buffalo and Niagara 

 Falls; and in 1852 became resident engineer of the 

 Ohio and Mississippi Railroad, with '35 miles of 

 road to construct and supervise. He settled in St. 

 Louis in 1861 ; enlisted as a private in tha 3d Mis- 

 souri Reserves ; was promoted to captain of en- 

 gineers when Gen. Fremont took command ; and 

 was detailed to special duty at Cape Girardeau. 

 Subsequently Gen. Haileck transferred him to 

 ' Bissell's Engineer Regiment of the West," with 

 which he served through the war and became its 

 colonel. After the fall of Atlanta, Col. Flad re- 

 signed from the army, returned to St. Louis, and 

 was employed as chief assistant to J. B. Woodward, 

 who planned the waterworks. In 1867 he was ap- 

 pointed a water commissioner of St. Louis, and 

 while holding this office was also chief assistant of 

 James B. Eads in the construction of the great St. 

 Louis bridge. He was president of the St. Louis 

 Board of Public Improvements for nine years, and 

 at the time of his death was a member of the Mis- 

 sissippi River Commission. 



Flagg, William Joseph, viticulturist, born in 

 New Haven, Conn., April 15, 1818; died in New 

 York city, April 15, 1898. He was a son of Henry 

 Collins Flagg, well known in his day throughout 

 the South, and was educated and admitted to the 

 bar in his native city. In the midst of a successful 

 practice he removed to Cincinnati, Ohio, and mar- 

 ried a daughter of Nicholas Longworth, and identi- 

 fied himself with the culture of the grape. He 

 made a careful study of the conditions of the in- 

 dustry in the United States, and then spent some 

 time in France, acquainting himself with systems 

 there, and especially investigating the ravages of 

 phylloxeria. On his return he published a book on 

 his" observations, which became an authority. Mr. 

 Flagg acquired large tracts of vine land along the 

 Ohio river, and valuable real-estate properties in 

 New York city and elsewhere. During the latter 

 part of his life he resided in New York city and 

 engaged in literary work. He was an accomplished 

 scholar, an authority on financial questions, and a 

 writer of fiction and on scientific subjects. On the 

 day of his death the first edition of a work on the 

 religions of all countries, on which he had been en- 

 gaged for fifteen years, was published in New York 

 under the title of " Youga." 





