Ellsler was instrumental in starting the careers of several well known actors of that period including his daughter's, and had once been a friend and business partner of the assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

In 1858 he began a two year tenure as manager of Woods's Theater, Cincinnati before returning to the Cleveland where over the following two decades he turned the Academy of Music into one of the more prestigious theatres and acting schools in America.

[3][4][7] In late 1863 Ellsler joined in a partnership with John Wilkes Booth, whom he’d known since his early days in Baltimore, and Thomas Mears, a mutual acquaintance.

Soon the operation proved more costly than they had anticipated and after an ill-advised attempt to increase production the well was destroyed when they employed an excessive amount of explosives (shot).

He ignored advice that the site was too far from Cleveland’s business district and in 1875 moved his stock company to the new theatre and turned the Academy of Music into a vaudeville house.

She remained active on stage with her husband after they married and by the time of her death, at the age of ninety-five, she was considered possibly the oldest former actress in America.