John H. Marron
actor, comedian, piper
b. Westborough, Massachusetts November 1849
d. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania March 2, 1927
John H. Marron, perhaps circa 1906. The person on the right is likely to be James E. Marron, his brother.
From the O'Donnell Brothers collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Photograph of original by Ian Darson.
Other photos of Marron are with the biographies of Tom Ennis and William Hanafin.
"The Blackbird" and "My Former Wife" with inscription "John Marron To My Friends the O'Donnell Bros"
Courtesy Irish Traditional Music Archive, Dublin. Photograph by Ian Darson.
John H. Marron is probably best described as an actor and comedian who played the pipes. He was active at least from 1886 to 1922, mostly in the lower reaches of vaudeville, burlesque and the theatre: the small time. Marron was widely travelled and seemed to have been acquainted with many. There is some evidence that he was friendly, gregarious.
Official documents have his name as Marren or Marron. As vaudevillians would say, he tended to use the name Marren in private life and was almost always Marron in professional life - his stage name. He was born in Westborough, Massachusetts, probably November 1849, to Patrick and Eliza Ellis Marren, themselves born in Ireland. A death certificate says he was 74 when he died, suggesting he was born around 1853. In one newspaper advertisement Marron and his brother James are billed as "The Donegal Twins," in another he is described as - or is perhaps playing the role of - "The Sligo Piper." These are the only references found which suggest where his parents might have been from, but we are grasping at straws. Michael Kelly of Dublin, Ireland, notes that Marren is a familiar name in County Sligo.
Marron's youth was spent in Massachusetts. He and his brother were living in Philadelphia by 1887. A city directory has them as "Marren Bros. (James F. & John H.), liquors, 1319 Bainbridge." Philadelphia was home base for the rest of his life, though he spent later years in Boston and may have lived in northeast Pennsylvania for a time.
Earliest solid reference for him as a musician is from 1890, where he played Irish pipes and piccolo at a church banquet in Detroit. After that there are many newspaper references to him as performer.
He was piper and actor in several stage plays, including "Dear Little Shamrock" and "The Cruiskeen Lawn." The latter was written by Dan McCarthy, also the star and manager of his own touring company. Touring with McCarthy was good work. McCarthy was at the height of success in the 1890s. Dancing and music were part of the show, and McCarthy consistently hired Irish pipers to play dance music. Over the years McCarthy hired several pipers, some of them, like Eddie Joyce and Pat Touhey, judged to be top-notch players. Marron was probably not in this class, but had a confident stage manner and sufficient piping skill to support the show. Marron played on and off with McCarthy from 1892-94.
For at least a portion of the 1893-94 season, John Marron, his brother James, and Pat Touhey were touring with Dan McCarthy's "The Rambler from Clare" company. John Marron played Father James, the priest; James Marron was Tom, an English footman, and Pat Touhey played Mr. Gavin. Father James was a substantial role, and presumably the piping was left to Touhey.
Marron later claimed to have played at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. There is no evidence for this and he was touring with McCarthy's play "The Rambler from Clare" for some of the time the Fair was open. There was a connection, however. Dancer Pat Brannigan was a successful performer at the Blarney Castle Irish Village at the Fair. He and Irish piper James Touhey performed together and became a well-known feature of the Village. McCarthy and Marron were in Chicago in July 1893 and "were each presented with a blackthorn cane at Chicago last week by Pat Brannigan, of the Irish Industrial Village, World's Fair."
For two years after the Chicago Fair in the summer months, a touring company replicated the Irish Village at state and county fairs. Brannigan was one of the performers, and he chose John Marron as his piping accompanist, now touted as "the famous piper of the midway."
Marron obtained work with theatrical touring companies for most of the 1890s. Towards the end of the decade the nature of his engagements shifts to bars, restaurants, vaudeville and burlesque houses. In 1899 and 1902 he played at hotels and restaurants in northeast Pennsylvania. This region, which includes the towns of Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, enjoyed an unusual amount of piping activity from about 1890 to 1910.
By 1905 he joined with his brother in several different projects, often as the vaudeville act "Marron and Marron." They worked together perhaps until 1911. Their two-man vaudeville act was not entirely a success. Sime, writing in Variety in August 1906, said "Marron and Marron with conversation, songs and dances delivered the talk as though they had been rehearsed by a college professor. The makeup and bagpipes helped some, but brighter talk is needed."
Later in 1906 the brothers performed in a play "The Two Johns" by J. C. Stewart. Philip and Peter Johns are overweight identical twins, and much merriment is supposed to ensue from their adventures. The Marrons and their company went on a western tour, Utah, Washington State, Oregon, with mixed results. Their advance man or publicist must have been very good, though, for there was much press coverage and many fanciful assertions about the Marrons. It was held that each weighed "nearly 400 pounds each," and that they were identical twins, so similar that it was "no easy matter for their fellow performers to tell to which of the 'Johns' they are talking." Business was not good and the company disbanded in Portland, Oregon. The brothers remained in Portland and performed a new skit, "The Piper and the Sailor." A local newspaper reported "A feature of the skit was the playing of the old Irish bagpipes by the elder Marron." This is at odds with the identical twins assertion. An 1855 Massachusetts Census listing has John older than James by one year.
In October 1907 the brothers appeared in Milford, MA. A review of the show noted "James F. and John Marron, singers and dancers appeared in the Lyceum theatre Monday night, the occasion being the 35th anniversary of their debut. The brothers were about 10 years old when they first appeared in Milford and since that time have showed in nearly every state in the country." That would make their debut about 1872 and their ages about ten years younger than other sources indicate.
Most references to John Marron after 1911 are from the Boston area. 1916 and 1917 Boston city directories list him as "comedian," boarding at 28½ Green Street. He attended meetings of the Irish Pipers' Club of Boston, which was active sporadically from 1910 to at least 1917. Marron is in a club photograph from 1917.
Fewer engagements are mentioned in the papers during these years in Boston. He appeared in locally produced plays and played at dances. His last known engagement was at a church concert in Cambridge, MA, February 1922.
John Marron married Eliza A. circa 1872. They had seven surviving children. According to the 1910 US Census all seven were then living at home, ages 36 to 10. Available evidence (Marron as boarder in Boston, 1916; death certificate address in Philadelphia) suggests that his family continued to live in Philadelphia as he travelled about.
What if you had the opportunity to go back in time and talk with a vaudeville-era piper, but only one? Sensible candidates might be Pat Touhey, or Francis O'Neill. Still, there is something to be said for choosing Marron, who probably knew most of the Irish pipers east of the Mississippi and I suspect would have been happy to talk about them.
Here are four examples of his apparently widespread interaction with other pipers:
- He wrote out a page of music, hornpipe and jig, for the O'Donnell Brothers, Ed and Cornelius, a not overly successful vaudeville team from Brooklyn. He inscribed it "to my friends." They kept it among their papers.
Some time before 1900 P. W. Mulqueeny of New Orleans, Louisiana, gave Marron an old set of pipes "made in the county Sligo, Ireland." Mulqueeny was a local piper and hardly known outside of New Orleans.
A photo exists of Tom Ennis smiling and playing Marron's set of pipes as Marron looks on, probably circa 1911. To let another play one's pipes and have it documented this way seems a generous pass-the-torch gesture.
In 1917 Francis O'Neill, the great music collector, compiled a list of "living performers on the union pipes," now at the National Library of Ireland. He was depending on William Hanafin to supply information about pipers in the Boston area, but Hanafin took sick and was unresponsive. O'Neill turned to Marron, who forwarded "most of the information" O'Neill used in the list.
John Marron died March 2, 1927 at his home in Philadelphia, age 74. Cause of death was "Cardio - renal disease," a combination of heart and kidney trouble. His brother James died two months later; wife Elizabeth died in 1944. All are buried next to each other at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Cheltenham, PA. The graves are unmarked.
Selected References
"At the State Fair." Syracuse [NY] Standard Aug. 5, 1895 p. 6 column 2
Syracuse NY Daily Standard 1895-1895 - 2418.pdf
"Couldn't Tell One from T'other." Salem OR Daily Capital Journal Dec. 8, 1906 p. 6 column 5
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn99063957/1906-12-08/ed-1/seq-6/
"Elks' Social Christmas Tree is Most Successful in History" [the elder Marron] Portland OR Oregon Daily Journal Dec. 28, 1906 p. 3 column 1
http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn85042444/1906-12-28/ed-1/seq-3/
"Grand Opera House." [The Rambler From Clare] New Haven [CT] Daily Morning Journal and Courier Dec. 26, 1893 p. 4 column 4
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015483/1893-12-26/ed-1/seq-4/
"Mulryne's Casino Special attraction for this week. The Donegal Twins, John and James Marron, Irish bag pipers" Trenton [NJ] Evening Times Oct. 18, 1899 p. 1 column 6
NewspaperArchive.com
"An Old Bag Pipe." [P. W. Mulqueeny] Shenandoah PA Evening Herald Sep. 29, 1899 p. 1 column 3
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87078000/1899-09-29/ed-1/seq-1/
O'Neill, Francis Names and addresses of living performers on the union pipes sent by Francis O'Neill in Chicago to Séamus Ó Casaide in Dublin, letters of June-August 1917. From the National Library of Ireland, Séamus Ó Casaide Collection, Ms. 8116. Transcribed by Michael Kelly.
Sime "Shows of the Week . . . Pastor's." Variety Aug. 11, 1906 p. 8 column 1
Variety 1906 - 0802.pdf
"St. Patrick's Day." Detroit [MI] Free Press March 16, 1890 p. 23 column 5
Newspapers.com
"Vicinity News Milford ..." Concord MA Weekly Enterprise Oct. 30, 1907 p. 5 column 2
Access Newspaper Archive
"With the First-Nighters" ["nearly 400 pounds each"] Salt Lake City UT Goodwin's Weekly Oct. 27, 1906 p. 8 column 3
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2010218519/1906-10-27/ed-1/seq-8/
"World of Players - Dan McCarthy and John Marron" New York Clipper July 15, 1893 p. 296 column 4
New York NY Clipper 1893-1894 - 0298.pdf
Nick Whitmer
July 2018 additions Jan., June 2019, Nov. 2023