Frank Brower

After a successful tour in the British Isles, Brower returned to the United States and teamed with Emmett and other blackface performers for a time.

[1] Brower began his career at age 13, first performing at Dick Meyer's Third and Chestnut Streets Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Brower claimed to have learned to dance from black people, and he took to doing song-and-dance blackface performances in circuses and theatres.

They played a variety house called the Franklin Theatre in Chatham Square and added a young dancer named Pierce to the act.

[6] By mid-December, Brower quit the trio, but he and Emmett had reteamed by January 1 in a show billed as "Negro Holiday Sports in Carolina and Virginia".

His performance style was characterized by wild poses and antics while he played, and he and fellow endman Dick Pelham, the featured dancers, broke into "Virginia Breakdown" dances.

Brower wrote some songs for the troupe, including "Old Joe" in 1844;[9] he did a stump speech called "Definition of the Bankrupt Laws".

[10] When the Virginia Minstrels broke up in 1843, Brower and banjoist Joel Sweeney joined Cooke's Royal Circus.

They found two more blackface performers and formed a new band, playing at the Lyceum Hall in Salem, Massachusetts, on October 23.

[16] For example, in January 1859, he joined Sanford's Opera Troupe in Philadelphia for a two-week engagement during which he did his "original Tom Dance and Reel".