Mrs W. H. Foley

Catherine Huggins, known in history as Mrs W. H. Foley (2 January 1821 – 4 March 1887) was a British actress, singer, director and manager.

[1] Foley was born into a theatrical family in England in 1821 as the second of ten children to mother, Frances Pierce and father, Benjamin Edwin Huggins.

Shortly afterwards, on 17 September 1845 at St Pancras Church, London, she married her son's father, Daniel Caparn, a chemist and druggist.

Separating from her husband, Foley traveled alone to San Francisco in June 1849, among the throngs attracted by the California Gold Rush.

Her first reported stage appearance took place in Sacramento on 23 June 1851, as Mrs W. H. Foley; she performed in a song-and-dance troupe sharing the bill with one of her husband's more elaborate imported showpieces, A Great American Panorama of New York City.

[1] The Foleys presented plays and other entertainments to enthusiastic audiences in Hawaii in late 1851 and 1852, and in December 1852 sailed from Honolulu to Australia.

First supported by amateurs led by the theater pioneer George Buckingham, she was joined by professional actors which her spouse had imported from Sydney in Australia to staff the Theatre Royal, which he had opened on 3 March 1856.

Six months later on 3 July 1867 Foley, along with her companion Vernon Webster, left New Zealand on the Lieutenant, bound for Guam and Valparaiso, Chile.