[1][3] Laura Don began her acting career with a traveling troupe performing in Brooklyn and later spent time with John Ellsler's company in Cleveland.

[4] At the same venue that September, she played Isabel, the principle female lead in The Pioneer Patriot: or the Dawn of Liberty with Harry Watkins and Joseph F. Wheelock[5] and in July 1876 at Hooley’s Theatre in Brooklyn, the Spanish beauty, Donna Jovita Castro, in Bret Harte's Two Men of Sandy Bar.

[8] On June 16, 1880, Don sailed for England aboard the Cunard liner S.S. Seythia with Frank Mayo's company[9] and was back in New York by that September to assume the role Antonia in Archibald Clavering Gunter's Two Nights in Rome during the closing days of its run at Union Square Theatre.

Music and Drama, September 23, 1882[14] Circa 1884, Don traveled to San Francisco to join the cast of Baldwin Theatre, then under the directorship of David Belasco.

At times he found her difficult and moody, but when Belasco noticed traces of blood on her lips after she fainted during a rehearsal, he realized she was ill. Don later spent the better part of a year in Nice, France, in a vain attempt to regain her health.