They had traveled by covered wagon from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to Fort Wayne, where they founded a frontier trading post.

[3] The Jews of Fort Wayne formed the Society for Visiting the Sick and Burying the Dead in 1848, with Frederic Nirdlinger as president.

Their son was the drama critic George Jean Nathan, editor of The Smart Set and co-founder with H. L. Mencken of The American Mercury.

They already owned Haverly's, later called the Chestnut Street Theatre, and they now dominated the theater business in Philadelphia.

In 1895, Klaw and Erlanger met with Nixon, Zimmerman and producers Charles Frohman, Al Hayman and William Harris to discuss ways to bring order to the chaos.

[12] The Shubert brothers, owners of a chain of upstate New York theaters, began buying property across the country and offering an alternative to the syndicate.

In 1905 four horse-drawn chariots came on stage in "Ben Hur", and a herd of camels, horses, goats featured in "Garden of Allah".

[3] An Associated Press story distributed in December 1903 said "…Samuel F. Nixon Nirdlinger is today the richest and most powerful theatrical manager and promoter in America….

His son, Frederick G. Nixon Nirdlinger, is an assistant to his father, and has won (his own) fame in his profession…”[17] Marcus Loew developed a growing chain of vaudeville theaters.

They competed with the agency run by Fred G. Nixon-Nirdlinger, who filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice alleging that Loew and others had established a virtual monopoly of the vaudeville business.

[18] The "Philadelphia Vaudeville War" continued until an agreement was struck on 13 December 1913 by which Loew gave up his holdings in the Metropolitan Opera House and Chestnut Street Opera House, and in exchange gained a stake in a new company being formed by Benjamin Franklin Keith.

The sensational story of the murder and subsequent trial, in which Charlotte was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense, made headlines for months.