[1][2][a] He started his unusual career at age 19 when called on to fill in for an ailing actress in The Quiet Family in Providence, Rhode Island.

Burgess debuted in New York as a solo artist in 1872 under producer Tony Pastor, when he was billed as an "Ethiopian Comedian".

[1] His first role as a female impersonator came in 1877 in The Coming Woman for the Theatre Comique of Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart.

George C. Odell later reflected on these roles: "I still see him as Widow Bedott in the kitchen, making pies, straightening out the affairs of the neighborhood and personifying, in spite of his sex, the attributes of a managing woman.

He was not the least bit effeminate, not at all like the usual female impersonator of minstrelsy or of variety, and yet he was Widow Bedott to the life, and with little suggestion of burlesque.