Thomas Wall

Wall, Thomas (fl. mid‐18th century), actor. This performer and sometimes manager first appears in American records when he performed with David Douglass's American Company in Charleston in 1766. He was advertised as being “From the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and the Haymarket London.” He continued to play (usually secondary roles) with the company for many seasons not only in Charleston but at Philadelphia's Southwark Theatre and New York's John Street Theatre. In 1781 Wall built a theatre in Baltimore in partnership with Adam Lindsay. During his two years as manager he took on such leading roles as Richard III, but he appears to have overreached, since after relinquishing the managerial reins to Dennis Ryan he remained to again play lesser parts. Eola Willis, in her The Charleston Stage in the XVIII Century, suggests he may have been the same Thomas Llewellyn Lechmere Wall who left behind a valuable collection of playbills covering forty years. George O. Seilhamer, who adds that he may also have used the name John Wall, noted, “Wall was not a great actor, but he was an ambitious one, and to him and his partner, Lindsay, not to Hallam and Henry, as has always been asserted, was due the revival of the drama in the United States when the dark hours of the War for Independence were over.”