Adah Isaacs Menken - Marriages and Family

Marriages and Family

By most accounts, the actress converted to Judaism after marrying her first husband, Alexander Isaac Menken, in 1856 in Livingston, Texas. He was a theatrical musician, whose father was a businessman in Cincinnati, Ohio. He managed her bookings as an actress for a few years. When they moved to Cincinnati and Ada met his family, she seriously studied and converted to Judaism. Alex Menken separated from and later divorced Adah; she remained committed to Judaism the rest of her life.

Adah Menken was married several times. She met some of her husbands while touring as an actress. Her second husband was John C. Heenan, a popular Irish-American prizefighter whom she married in 1859. Some time after their marriage, the press discovered she did not yet have a legal divorce from Menken and accused her of bigamy. (She had thought he would have taken care of it, and he soon did.) As John Heenan was one of the most famous and popular figures in America, the press also accused Menken of marrying for his celebrity. They had a son, who died soon after birth.

When Menken met Charles Blondin, notable for crossing Niagara Falls on a tightrope, the two were quickly attracted to each other. She suggested she would marry him if they could perform a couple's act above the falls. Blondin refused, saying that he would be “distracted by her beauty.” The two had an affair, during which they conducted a vaudeville tour across the United States.

Menken continued to marry. In 1862 she married Robert Henry Newell, a humorist and editor of the Sunday Mercury in New York, who had recently published most of her poetry. They were together about three years. The next in 1866 was James Paul Barkley, a gambler whom she soon left. She returned without him to France, where she was performing. There she had their son, whom she named Louis Dudevant Victor Emanuel Barkley; the baby's godmother was the author George Sand (A. F. Lesser). Louis died in infancy.