Claire Rochester was a vaudeville performer popular in the early 1900s. She was from Atlanta, Georgia, where her father was a judge of the court of appeals. Her mother was Mrs Jannie Bryant Rochester, formerly of Gordon County, Georgia.
She was a descendant of the founder of Rochester, New York, Nathaniel Rochester. Claire Rochester moved north to study at the Boston Conservatory of Music. Lew Fields offered her the most money and she became the prima donna in his production of All Aboard. High class vaudeville promoters competed for her services and she headlined as a two-a-day attraction following her stint with Fields.
In March 1916 she was among the entertainers in the Midnight Frolic produced by Flo Ziegfeld. The New Amsterdam Roof also featured performances by Will Rogers, the Dolly Sisters dancers, and Oscar Shaw. One of the venues where she appeared was the Hippodrome Theatre, New York City. In August 1917 she was a part of a musical revue presented there which was staged by R.H. Burnside.
Rochester was active in the Liberty Bond movement during World War I. A car enthusiast, she took part in an automobile tour from New York to San Francisco in 1917, to raise money for the war effort. She drove an Apperson Roadaplane on a previous coast-to-coast trip, establishing a record run.
Claire Rochester Miller died April 16, 1921 in Memphis Tennessee.
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“The role of the stepmother is the most difficult of all, because you can’t ever just be. You’re constantly being tested—by the children, the neighbors, your husband, the relatives, old friends who knew the children’s parents in their first marriage, and by yourself.”
—Anonymous Stepparent. Making It as a Stepparent, by Claire Berman, introduction (1980, repr. 1986)
“The clog of all pleasure, the luggage of life,
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