Charles Francis Coghlan - Marriage

Marriage

Actress Louisa Elizabeth Thorn, a native of London, England, was apparently Charles Coghlan’s common-law wife for twenty-five years or more and the mother of his daughter Gertrude. . When in 1893 Coghlan married nineteen year-old Kuhne Beveridge, a promising sculptor and aspiring actress from a prominent Illinois family, questions arose about his former marital status. Rose Coghlan soon came to her brother’s defense stating she had known for years that Louisa and Charles never legally married. Not long afterwards though, Rose decided to dissolved the business partnership she had with her brother. Upon learning of her father’s marriage, an upset Gertrude Coghlan reportedly told the press, “I am Charles Coghlan’s adopted daughter and not related to him in any way.” Perhaps as an attempt to save his daughter the stigma of an illegitimate birth, Coghlan later supported Gertrude’s claim that she was adopted, just not legally through the courts. Within a year of his marriage Coghlan would return to Louisa leaving Beveridge to seek an absolute divorce on the grounds of desertion. A few years later Gertrude joined her father's company playing Juliet in the Broadway production of the “Royal Box” and afterwards on the road. Gertrude Coghlan, who took to the stage at age sixteen, would go on to have a theatrical career spanning nearly fifty years.

The stage actor and director, Charles F. Coghlan (1896-1971), was often thought to be Coghlan’s son, in fact he was his nephew, the son of the mezzo-soprano singer Elizabeth “Eily” Coghlan. She died in April, 1900 at the age of thirty-six leaving Charles to be adopted by her sister, Rose Coghlan. Charles’ father, according to his mother's New York Times obituary, was Sydney Battam, a London banker. At the time of his wife’s death, Bratton was living in London with their twelve year-old daughter, while four year-old Charles was with his mother in America. At least one family researcher has made the claim that Charles F. Coghlan was the illegitimate son of Rose Coghlan and her one-time lover King Edward VII of England.