Roselle Knott

Roselle Knott, born Agnes Roselle on March 19, 1865, in Ancaster, Hamilton, Canada West, was a Canadian actress whose stage career spanned four decades. She was the daughter of Abraham Rossell and Agnes Jane McDavid Rossell, though birth year records vary across sources, with dates ranging from 1863 to 1870. Knott died on January 28, 1948, in Hamilton, at the age of 82.

Her theatrical training began in Canada at the Hamilton Academy of Music, and she made her New York debut in 1893 in a production of Shakespeare's As You Like It. That same year she appeared in an all-women production of the same play as a member of the Women's Professional League. Her Broadway career ran from 1896 to 1901 and included appearances in The Mormon Wife, Quo Vadis, and The Cherry Pickers. In 1900, she took the starring role in Quo Vadis at the Empire Theatre, subsequently touring the production in Chicago and Boston. She also toured with Richard Mansfield's company in A Parisian Romance and Beau Brummel.

From 1902 to 1903, Knott succeeded Julia Marlowe in the role of Mary Tudor in When Knighthood Was in Flower, based on the novel by Charles Major. In 1906, Elizabeth Johnson Ward Doremus wrote the title role of The Duchess of Devonshire specifically for her. That same year, while performing in Alice Sit-by-the-Fire by James Barrie in Logansport, Indiana, a fire broke out backstage. Knott continued her performance without interruption, and no audience members died as a result. She retired from the stage in 1907 following a tour of Australia with her second husband's theatrical company, but returned to acting by 1911, taking on older Shakespearean roles including Lady Macbeth. In 1912 she toured North America in The Awakening of Helena Richie. During that tour, the name Roselle was reportedly given to newborn girls in cities she visited, a phenomenon described in contemporary newspaper accounts as "a sort of Roselle Knott epidemic." Knott herself commented on the trend in a 1912 interview. She directed plays in Hamilton before relocating to New York City in 1916 to establish her own company, and she also contributed a dessert recipe that year to an actors' cookbook organized by Mabel Rowland as a World War I fundraiser. Knott retired from performing in 1936 but continued to teach acting in New York City, counting Robert Montgomery and Miriam Hopkins among her students.

In her personal life, Knott married actor Thomas Knott in 1884. The couple had three children: Ivey, Viola, and Thomas Jr. Ivey died in infancy in 1885, and Thomas Knott Sr. died in a sports accident in 1896. In 1907 she married theatrical producer Ernest George Montague Shipman; they divorced in 1912, after which he married actress Nell Shipman. One of the many children named Roselle during her 1912 tour was her own granddaughter, Roselle Heaps DeCarli, born in 1930 and died in 2002.