This is your life - Julia Barber

 Julia Barber - Dancer and actress

Julia Barber aka Wallace

My 2x great grandmother was somewhat of a mystery to me for 30+ years. I had only this photo (left) given to me by a cousin back in the 1980's. She was the wife of John Wallace, a fairly prominent theatre actor in Australia in the 1880's. Looking at her photo I had just thought of her as the demure wife, she looked quite the lady. I didn't have any idea about who she was besides a wife. I think she is beautiful, and I loved that she was likely my namesake, though I am Julie rather than Julia. Thankfully, she rescued me from being called Liesl, after the girl in the "Sound of Music".

Family stories passed down from my grandmother told of a story of betrayal, of John Wallace taking a trip to England with their young son Fred and, on their return, of Fred recounting to his mother times spent in bed with an "auntie" reading books. It was said that Julia couldn't tolerate the infidelity and little Fred was blamed for their marriage breakup when she left. 

Evidently these are the stories that Fred had told his children about the early years of his life. Fred also said that his father had sent him to work on a farm and that he had no shoes, and that the farmer would provide them and take them back again when he moved on. And...how he met his father in the street one day and his father didn't know him, but how he took his father in in in his old age being the Christian thing to do. So John was painted as the villain and Julia has always been saintly. Julia has always been most beloved in our family. 

After Julia left John I had difficulty tracking her, she just seemed to disappear into thin air, I wanted to know what became of her. I searched for both Julia Wallace and Julia Barber in the records with no results. 

My aunt told me Julia had gone to America, a great uncle (Gran's brother Arthur) told me that he thought she had been in South Australia as he had received a parcel from an "Aunt Julia" and thought that it was really his grandmother. Given what I know now, this couldn't have been true. Julia was gone from this earth before he had arrived.

Research was more difficult back then. No internet, no online records and definitely no DNA tests. It wasn't a choice between testing companies back then, DNA testing just didn't exist for genealogists. But 30 years later it was DNA that gave me the breakthrough I needed to find my Julia.

In 2018 I had taken a DNA test, and I coerced numerous family members to do the same. This particular morning about 12 months later I was up early doing a little research before work, as you do. I came across a DNA match who matched with my Dad as well so I knew it was my paternal line. Looking at her small tree of 24 people I noted a familiar name with surprise. Julia Barber. There was a husband attached but not our John Wallace. 

I did some digging and found the "husband" was a musician which was in keeping with the theatrical background of her past. Time was ticking and it was time to go to work.....but this was too good to let go. Just as well I was being chauffeured by my husband as we always travelled to work together. That left me free to continue my research in the car on my iPad. 

Researching the name "Edwin Stidolph" I came across a blog post headed "Trial by Jury: a bevy of (original) bridesmaids" by Kurt of Gerolstein! What on earth could this have to do with Edwin Stidolph. The blog post was long and I scrolled and scrolled past many beautiful women until my eyes alighted on the image of my gt-gt grandmother.  I am sure my surprise almost caused an accident. 

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2018/07/
trial-by-jury-bevy-of-bridesmaids.html

The blog held the story of Julia, a little of her life with John, of her exploits as a dancer and actress in the Soldene Troupe, of her visiting America, touring Britain and making "the famed voyage" to Australia. It also told me of how, in 1884, after leaving my gt-gt grandfather, she married Edwin William Stidolph of the acrobatic Faust Family. She ran away to join the circus? It also told a snippet of her time in America and finally of her death in Columbus Ohio 1914..."loved by the profession the world over". 

The blog also alerted me to the fact that John Wallace was a stage name for John Clark!

I got to work and rang my father with the news I had found. He was "happy for me" but was really less interested in this than I had hoped. Still, this was about Julia and I had found her.

So that night after work my goal was to track down the bearer of this information. Kurt of Gerolstein! I left a message on his blog. Tick Tick Tick....no response. I am impatient, not necessarily a great trait in a genealogist. A bit more research about Kurt. Theatrical historian... Kurt Ganzl. Search on Facebook....found.....friend request.....accepted...YES!

Julia Barber

Kurt and I had many a long conversation which turned out to revolve more around John Wallace than Julia, but any information was welcome. Kurt had a great respect for John and he added that Julia was a pretty fair dancer as well. 

Kurt gifted me a set of his books for the cost of postage from NZ. The two books at 750 pages each weigh a hefty amount, and they are the pride of my book collection. The lives of John and Julia, as they entwined with the story of Emily Soldene and the troupe, are chronicled mostly throughout the first book. It was here that I found my second photo of Julia shown here.

Most of my conversation thereafter with Kurt was about John and the fact that he was buried in an unmarked grave etc. but this story is not his story, it is Julia's.

Now that I knew about Julia's second marriage I wanted to find out more about her life. I had tried to contact my DNA match but got no response, a few months later I tried again, this time providing my email address and telling her about our relationship through siblings of her grandmother... "as far as I know my grandmother was an only child...please prove it" was the response that came back.

Well, prove it I did, and Judy became an absolute font of knowledge and shared many photos. My gallery swelled. Judy provided hundreds of newspaper accounts of the Faust family (information for yet another post) so I was able to track a lot of the family's movements, and shipping records contained details of Mrs. Faust Jnr. who I now knew was Julia.

It seems Julia left her first family behind, though I really can't understand how she did that. Her children were Frederick John age 6, Julia Olive Jnr age 4, Alfred Victor age 2 and Grace Isabel 1 year old. 

Fred grew up to be a baker and married my gt-grandmother Jane Horkings. Julia Olive worked as a seamstress perhaps sewing costumes for the theatre, she married a theatre employee and divorced, no children that I can find.  Alfred married twice and had one child with his first wife. Grace though was the saddest story, working as a factory hand and dying at age 19 of TB, buried in a paupers grave in the Quaker section of the Melbourne cemetery. 

Julia travelled mostly back and forth between NZ and Australia. The Faust family were working with Chiarini's circus. Ted was well known for his Risley Act (foot juggling) where he twirls youngsters around on his feet. They were also very musical and the acts consisted of the original members of the Faust family, Edwin Snr and most of his large brood of children, Ted being the eldest.

Ruby Adelaide

Julia had 3 children with Edwin (aka Ted Faust) while they were travelling. Violet Eugenie was born in 1885 on one of their trips to NZ but Violet died just before Ruby Adelaide arrived. Ruby was born in South Australia in 1887. In 1889 they moved to Sydney and their youngest, Edwin Frederick Sydney, was born. 

Researching the dates and whereabouts of the family was made more difficult as they were often listed using their stage name Faust though Stidolph was their legal name.

In Sydney, they ran a pub, the Royal Town Hall Hotel, though no doubt still entertaining people in one way or another. They were recruiting children to join their circus act according to some ads I found, perhaps planning their next round of performances. There are also some news reports of scandals involving the pub, which is on a corner in Kent and Druitt Streets just below the Sydney Town Hall (and just down the road from the Society of Australian Genealogists office).

In 1893 tragedy struck again taking Edwin Jnr. I can imagine that this was enough for Julia and Ted, and soon after in about 1894, they left Sydney and set off for America where they made Columbus, Ohio their home. They travelled all over America but they always seemed to return to Ohio. 

Julia was living at the Corrodi Hotel in Columbus in 1900. She was listed there in the census with her husband Ted, his two brothers Eugene and Victor (not his real brother), daughter Ruby and two sons, Louis and Artie, birthplace shown as Australia. Really?

The shipping records didn't show Louis and Artie with Julia, Ted and Ruby. I had never heard of these boys before. I searched all the Australian state's BDM records and found nothing. After a great deal of searching, lots of mentions in the US newspapers etc. I found their deaths on a Find-a-Grave site and the story of how they were part of the Faust troupe, who had told them their family had died in a boating accident. Later the boys found out that this wasn't true. It seems the mother had probably consented to give the boys to the circus for their board, lodgings and education to the age of 18 as was the practice. So not sons of Julia and Ted at all. 

By all accounts the Faust family were shown to be "clean and honest", kind and generous people, and gentle with their young charges. It seems likely, to me, that they told the boys the story to shield them from the truth that their mother had given them up. It seems the boys didn't see this as a kindness.

There are other "sons" mentioned in the newspapers including Willie, Bert, Freddy and Ray. These are part of my ongoing research to try and uncover their true identities. Freddy is not my gt-grandfather as one might suggest. Frederick Wallace would have been too old and surely this would have been passed down as a family story.

For about 10 years the Ted E. Faust Minstrels travelled the American states and there are many newspaper articles; grand stories were told of their Pullman Car called the "Columbus", a railway car decked out with a "Press Parlor",  a training gym, and complete library described as one of the finest in the world and a French tutor to teach the children as they travelled. There are stories of Ted and his talking parrot and scams to get into the races for free. It was also reported that Julia and Ruby visited a lot of Physical Culture clubs and gave their expertise with authority. Ruby was a talented performer in her own right and later went on the have a family of her own, but that is a story for another time.

Eventually, the minstrel show went bust. It seems Julia and Ted may have gone their separate ways toward the end.

In 1910, Julia was the hotel keeper of the Lewellen Hotel in East State Street, Columbus. Now only Julia and Ruby were listed in the census there. Where were Ted and the others? An article does say the Hotel was run by Ted in 1910, perhaps he was just away that night. After Julia died, Ted would marry a young actress, was he with her even then? 

In 1915 aged 59, Julia succumbed to what is, even these days, a silent killer, uterine cancer. She is laid to rest in an unmarked grave in the Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus Ohio, as Julia Faust. One of the family friends, Doc Waddell, wrote a sweet goodbye to his friend saying that "never lived a dearer mother. She was good as wife and in every walk...the trees and the grass and the flowers and the tears above her clay will stir and sway and whisper of her forever and forever."

Well, it took a long time but my research was fruitful. I had found my Julia, and my gallery of her photos now numbers 12. I hope that in time I might uncover more. But, here is to the lady who had such an interesting life. My Julia.

Miss Julia Barber in Olivette

Postscript

I was lucky enough to meet my American cousins Judy and Jennifer when they came to Australia in March 2020 right before the pandemic hit. I wonder what Julia would have thought of our meeting so many years later!

Thanks must go to Judy for doing the DNA test, and for generously providing me with so many photos and information. I hope to keep the memories alive by sharing them here with you as well.

Thanks to Kurt for writing his blog and sharing his immense theatrical knowledge and for the gift of his wonderful books, and for his donation to add a footstone to Johnny Wallace's grave.

Other resources

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2018/07/trial-by-jury-bevy-of-bridesmaids.html

http://operetta-research-center.org/emily-soldene-search-singer/

Book references from "See how they ring!" by Gwyn Gillard, who also helped with research ideas regarding Louis and Artie.