In the early 1900s, Fanny Osborn Porteous lived an unassuming life in Watertown, S.D., spending her days walking from her home on West Kemp Avenue to her job at the local Salvation Army.
It wasn’t until her death in 1934 at age 85, and her subsequent obituary in the New York Times, did Watertown residents learn about Fanny’s glamourous past.
Decades earlier, under her stage name of Fanny Wentworth, she had starred as Topsy in the first stage version of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Later, she co-starred with Edwin Booth, brother of the infamous John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.
She had a long, distinguished career on stages across the country and overseas. She even sang numerous times in Command Performances for Queen Victoria.
She is buried in Watertown’s Mt. Hope Cemetery.
Fanny’s story was one of several told by Christy Lickei during an event sponsored by the Friends of the Watertown Regional Library Monday night at the library.
The presentation, titled “Characters of Codington County,” told the stories of several Codington County residents from history. Included in the program were early settler William Pike, who started the Kampeska Homestead Society; Freeman Thayer, the county’s first sheriff who survived multiple tours in the Civil War before accidentally and fatally shooting himself; artist John Banvard, whose massive panorama painting of the Missouri River was seen by people around the world in the late 1800s; Cleveland Abbott, a star Watertown High School and South Dakota State University athlete and World War I veteran who later served as athletic director, professor and coach at Tuskegee University in Alabama. He coached the Tuskegee Golden Tigers football team for 32 seasons from 1923 until 1954.
Those tales and several others were enjoyed by the crowd of history lovers.
The next event by the Friends of the Watertown Regional Library will be held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 28. It will be an author talk by Christine Mager Wevik on her new book “Someone Knows – Highlighting South Dakota Cold Cases.”