Lois Weber - Early Life

Early Life

Florence Lois Weber was born on June 13, 1879 in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania (since 1907 Pittsburgh's Northside neighborhood), the second of three children of Mary Matilda "Tillie" Snaman (born Mathilda Schneeman in March 1854 in Reserve Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania; died 1935 in Miami, Florida) and George Weber (born June 1855; died about 1910), an upholster and decorator, who had spent several years in missionary street work, and the younger sister of Elizabeth "Bessie" Snaman Weber Jay (born April 9, 1877 in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania; died February 26, 1966 in Florida) and older sister of Ethel Weber Howland (born July 3, 1887 in Pennsylvania), who later appeared in two of Florence's films in 1916, and married assistant director Louis A. "Lou" Howland. The Webers were a devout middle class Christian family of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.

Weber was considered a child prodigy, and an excellent pianist. As a girl, music was her mania, and her most treasured possession was a baby grand piano. Weber left home and lived in poverty while working as a street-corner evangelist and social activist for two years with the evangelical Church Army Workers, an organization similar to the Salvation Army, preaching and singing hymns on street-corners and singing and playing the organ in rescue missions in red-light districts in Pittsburgh and New York, until the Church Army Workers disbanded in 1900.

In June 1900, Weber was almost 21 and was living with her parents and two sisters at 1717 Fremont Street, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, where she was a music student. By April 1903, Weber was performing as a soprano singer and pianist. She toured the United States as a concert pianist with renowned harpist Mrs Apt Thomas until her final performance in Charleston, South Carolina a year later. After an unfortunate incident when a piano key broke during a recital, Weber retired from the concert stage, having lost her nerve to play in public. Weber describes the incident that precipitated her retirement: "Just as I started to play a black key came off in my hand. I kept forgetting that the key was not there, and reaching for it. The incident broke my nerve. I could not finish and I never appeared on the concert stage again. It is my belief that when that key came off in my hand, a certain phase of my development came to an end."