Actress. Known professionally as Blanche Chapman, Mrs. Ford was a celebrated beauty of the 19th Century stage whose theatrical career eventually spanned more than eight decades. Born Ada Blanche Chapman in Covington, Kentucky, to actors Harry S. Chapman and his wife, Julia Drake, she was a cousin of Edwin and John Wilkes Booth, and a descendant of an old theatrical family that had first “tread the boards” in 17th Century England. In 1854, at the age of three, she made her New York debut in the first of many speaking roles with the legendary clown and classical actor George L. Fox.  A decade later, she and her younger sister Ella began delighting Civil War-weary audiences as the musical “Chapman Sisters”. A girl of 14 when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, she would later recall seeing the body of her infamous relative, John Wilkes Booth, and being pledged to secrecy regarding his burial. In 1873 she married Henry Clay Ford, who had been the manager of Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, at the time of the assassination, and the couple eventually became the parents of four children. Motherhood did not entirely deter Blanche from pursuing her career, however, and she went on to reap acclaim in Shakespearean roles opposite the great Edwin Booth, and for her work in light opera. The first American to play the Gilbert & Sullivan heroines Iolanthe and Princess Ida, she also starred in the US production of “H.M.S. Pinafore” which was conducted by its composer, Sir Arthur Sullivan. Transitioning to character roles by the 20th Century, in 1914 she made a rare screen appearance in the title role of the silent film “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch”, and in 1927 revealed the undiminished beauty of her speaking voice in the sound short “Then and Now”. But her forte remained the stage, where she last appeared at age 86 in a 1936 summerstock production entitled “Latchstrings”. Predeceased by her husband in 1915, she retired to Rutherford, NJ, where the couple had made their home since 1912. She died there at the age of 91, survived by two of their children. (bio by: Nikita Barlow)  Family links:  Spouse:  Henry Clay Ford (1844 – 1915)*  Children:  Harry C. Ford (____ – 1938)*   Ella Ford (____ – 1936)*  George Denham Ford (1879 – 1974)* *Calculated relationship