Edwin P Christy

Edwin P. Christy 1815-62, American showman, b. Philadelphia. He established c.1846 in Buffalo, N.Y., a company of minstrels that came to be known as Christy's Minstrels. The company, although not the first of its kind, crystallized the pattern of the minstrel show —the interlocutor, the semicircular arrangement of white performers in blackface, the end man, and the variety act. For over 10 years Christy had great success all over the United States and in England. He retired in 1854, and the group continued under the direction of George N. Harrington, who assumed the name Christy. Some of the songs of Stephen Foster were published bearing Christy's name as author and composer.

Christy, Edwin P. (1815–62), actor and singer, whose minstrel show, organized in the early 1840s as the Virginia Minstrels and later known as Christy's Minstrels, toured the U.S. and England, receiving popular acclaim and being widely imitated. Christy himself performed as interlocutor, and his singing of the minstrel songs of Stephen Foster, which were first published under Christy's name, was partly responsible for their early popularity.