In the 1870s, a famous Italian ballerina and her cowboy celebrity husband lived in a three story commercial building near the millyard in Lowell, Mass.
Giuseppina Morlacchi was a petite, graceful prima ballerina from Milan, fluent in four languages, the toast of the East. Texas Jack Omohundro was a Confederate scout, a hunter, a cattleman and a dime novel hero from out west.
She had introduced the can-can to America, while he had debuted the lasso on stage.
This is the story of how they ended up with each other in the City of Lowell, Mass.
Giuseppina Morlacchi, Italian Ballerina
She was born on Oct. 8, 1836. At the age of 6, her parents sent her to train with the world’s greatest ballet teacher, Carlo Blasi, at La Scala opera house. At 20, she made her stage debut at Teatro Carlo Felice, the principal opera house in Genoa. She rose quickly. Well-regarded and refined, she performed throughout Europe—in Rome, Lisbon, Paris and London.
La Scala, where many an Italian ballerina was trained
In Lisbon she met Don Juan DePol, a well-known manager who persuaded her to headline a tour of the United States. She would perform in a ballet extravaganza called “The Devil’s Auction.”
An Italian Ballerina Comes to America
Americans knew ballet from the French emigres who had fled the Haitian Revolution. They were professionally trained dancers, musicians and actors well-versed in the ballet repertoire of the time. They had established themselves as theater managers, choreographers, dancing masters and performers.
Beginning in the 1840s, Italian ballet companies followed the French. Italian ballerinas like Giuseppina Morlacchi found America to their liking. The growing country provided them with financial opportunities, and it also gave them chances they might not have had at La Scala. In America they could become choreographers, directors or lead performers.
Her $100,000 Legs
When Giuseppina Morlacchi arrived in New York City in the fall of 1867, DePol made sure the world knew about it.
He had the theater orchestra play Strauss waltzes and operatic airs on the pavement beneath her Fifth Avenue Hotel suite. He let it be known he insured her legs for $100,000 (equal to $2,249,762 today). Newspapers claimed she was “more valuable than Kentucky” (a race horse, not the state).
Giuseppina_Morlacchi
She would perform in a ballet extravaganza, “The Devil’s Banquet,” which wowed New Yorkers with spectacular costumes and scenery unlike anything they had seen before.
The New York Herald critic called her “a beautiful creature” who “came upon the stage like a sudden ray of light.”
“She is of the spiritual order of woman, small, delicate, fiery, with a fine little head and a luminous face, and she dances with all her soul, as well as with all her body,” he wrote.
After two months the troupe moved on to Boston, where the choreographer got sick and went back to New York. Giuseppina then seized the chance to do something new. On Jan. 6, 1868, she caused a sensation when she performed the Grand Gallop Can-Can in Boston. The city—the whole country in fact—had never seen such a dance.
The Can-Can
An eyewitness later described the sensation she created.
Everyone was surprised, no one could understand the meaning of the queer name, but after the opening night all doubts were removed; no ladies applied for tickets after that; but the male sex crowded the theatre to the point of suffocation. Whether acquainted or not, everyone was asking, “Have you seen the can-can?”…So intensely became the fervor of the nightly throngs that some wag spread the rumor that the Barnicoat Engine Company (steamer No. 4) had orders to be on hand to quell the excessive heat of the auditors by steams of cold water!
Giuseppina loved the creative freedom she had dancing and choreographing in Boston, but she didn’t love the city. So she bought a working farm on the railroad line in Billerica, 25 miles northwest of Boston. She brought her older sister Angelina and later her widowed father to live with her.
Giuseppina filled her farmhouse library with rare books, hung paintings by old Italian masters and played the piano in the evenings. She told a reporter for the magazine Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly (July 30, 1870) that she wanted to ship green peas and new potatoes to the Boston market before her country neighbors. Giuseppina kept horses, cantering into town on errands in the village. She wore a calico dress and braids while attending to the farm chores, pants when she went into the woods.
An Italian Ballerina Goes West
By 1872, Giuseppina—known as the “Peerless Morlacchi”—had her own troupe, which toured under her name. She was performing in Chicago when she was asked to appear in a new kind of play, one about the Wild West. Two cowboys named Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack, were to star in the production.
She said “Yes,” and in a few days she appeared in “Sounds of the Prairie” as the Indian princess Dove Eye.
Texas Jack
Texas Jack—John Baker Omohundro—came into the world in Fluvanna County, Va., on July 27, 1846. Like all Omohundros in the United States. he was descended from Richard Omohundro, an English farmer who lived in Westmoreland County, Virginia, in the late 17th century.
As a boy he loved to hunt and fish. He joined the Confederate Army at 17 as a private, where he scouted for Gen. J.E.B. Stuart. When the war ended, he moved to Texas and drove cattle on the Chisholm Trail.
Wild Bill Hickock, Texas Jack Omohundro and Buffalo Bill Cody
One day Texas Jack rode a few thousand head of longhorn cattle into North Platte, where Buffalo Bill Cody was in charge of the government’s livestock at Fort McPherson. They struck up a fast friendship, hunting, drinking and scouting together. Sometimes they led hunting expeditions for European royalty and American generals like Philip Sheridan and George Armstrong Custer.
Texas Jack once saved Buffalo Bill’s life when they hunted down some horse thieves. Just as one of the thieves drew a bead on Cody, Texas Jack shot him to death.
From Dime Novel to the Stage
Such exploits made their way into the dime novels of the day—cheap, wildly popular adventure stores. Thousands of boys back East knew about the cowboy duo of Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack.
One of the dime novel authors, Ned Buntline, decided to put the two cowboys on stage. He persuaded Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack to come to Chicago, where they would meet in December at Nixon’s Opera House. Buffalo Bill didn’t want to do it at first, but Texas Jack talked him into it.
When they arrived in Chicago, they found Buntline had rented a theater and promoted the show. But he hadn’t selected a cast, and he hadn’t written the play scheduled to premiere in four days.
It didn’t matter. Buntline quickly assembled a cast, including the Peerless Morlacchi. Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack incorporated their frontier experiences into the act and wore their cowboy garb, complete with buckskin, Stetson hats and bowie knives. Texas Jack introduced a rope act, which he later taught Will Rogers.
Ned Buntline,Buffalo Bill Cody, Giuseppina Morlacchi and Texas Jack Omohundra as they appeared in “Sounds of the Prairie”
“Sounds of the Prairie” had more gunpowder, scalping knives and wild Indians than previous playwrights had ever dreamed of. It was a huge hit, ushering in Wild West shows for the next 80 years. Audiences across the United States packed theaters to watch it.
But Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack had never appeared on stage before. They often flubbed their lines. Peerless Morlacchi found herself coaching Texas Jack in stagecraft. Soon they were seen taking walks and dining out together—a lot.
Love, Marriage and Tragedy
The Italian ballerina and the cowboy celebrity married in St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Rochester, N.Y., on Aug. 31, 1873, and moved to Lowell, Mass. Giuseppina—Josephine by then—knew Lowell because of its proximity to her farm in Billerica. She and Texas Jack bought a three-story building at the corner of Market and Suffolk streets. Storefronts comprised the first floor, a hall the second and apartments on the third. The second floor hall gave it its name—Suffolk Hall.
Texas Jack soon grew restless, so in 1880 they headed out to the silver mining town of Leadville, Colo., for a visit. Texas Jack caught a cold, which turned into pneumonia and killed him at 33.
Giuseppina Morlacchi never toured again. From time to time she danced in small productions in Lowell. She also taught dancing, though she never achieved her goal of opening a dancing school for the Lowell mill girls.
Her sister, Angelina, had a severe stroke, and Giuseppina cared for her until she died in 1885. Then Giuseppina took to her bed, ill with stomach cancer. She died on July 23,1886, not yet 40. Both sisters are buried at St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Lowell.
Buffalo Bill kept his friend’s legacy alive by running his Wild West shows for the next 40 years. Though Texas Jack had talked a reluctant Buffalo Bill onto the stage, the latter’s fame now far outshines Texas Jack.
With thanks to “Buckskin And Stain” by Herschel C.Logan.
