James Boswell (1740-1795) family tree

Murray, Mrs Charles the second, Ann, née Acres, earlier Mrs Jonathan Payne (fl. 1770–1799), actreſs, dancer, singer. The actress who was born Ann Acres was by February 1770 the wife of the actor Jonathan Payne, and in that month they were in a troupe
playing in Glasgow. The following autumn, Mr and Mrs Payne were engaged as dancers.

The Paynes came to London on 18 September 1772 to play Young Meadows and Lucinda
in a performance of Love in a Village at the Haymarket Theatre. They returned north and
together they remained members of the companies at Norwich and York until 1776, after
which year their careers did not run parallel. Payne was to be found in the south, mainly at
Bath and Bristol, until his death on 18 December 1784. Mrs Payne, however, evidently es
tranged from her husband, remained in the north, mainly at Norwich. She acted at the
New Theatre in Derby in September 1775 and at Richmond, Surrey, in June 1778 (when Payne
was also there), and again at Derby in December 1779.

In 1781, Mrs Payne was earning £1 5s. per week as a member of the Norwich company.
Sometime soon after, in 1782 it seems, she began to call herself Mrs Murray, having be
come the second wife of the Norwich actor Charles Murray, whose first wife, also a Nor
wich performer, had died at the age of 21 in January 1780. It is not clear that Ann Payne
was legally married to Murray at this time, because Jonathan Payne, from whom she was
estranged, did not die until 1784.

Mrs Murray acted with Charles Murray on the Norwich and York circuit until 1785, and
then they became familiar performers at Bath and Bristol for over a decade. She also acted at
Brighton in 1786. She was probably the Mrs Murray who was at Limerick in November
1790 and March 1791, at Cork in the summer of 1791, and at Crow Street, Dublin, also in
that latter year. At Mrs Murray's benefit in Bath on 19 May 1796, her daughter Harriet
played the Fine Lady in Lethe and her husband spoke a farewell. The receipts of £64 were
disappointing.

Though her husband began a successful and long engagement at Covent Garden Theatre in
September 1796, Mrs Murray made only one appearance there. On Io May 1799 she acted
Jacintha in Lovers' Quarrels, for her husband's benefit. That night Murray played Friar Law
rence in Romeo and Juliet, and their daughter Harriet Murray (later Mrs Henry Siddons) ap
peared as Juliet. Her engagement with her husband at Liverpool in the summer of 1799
is the last record we have of Mrs Murray, though she may have lived on in retirement for some years.

The Norwich Chronicle of 21 February 1784 had referred to Mrs Murray as “the Thalia of Norwich" and remarked on her “truly comic face.”

By her former marriage to Jonathan Payne, Ann Murray had a son who acted at York in 1776. A daughter called Miss Payne married the actor William Noble at Newcastle on 6 March 1803 (the Gentleman's Magazine identi fied her as the daughter of Mrs Charles Murray, “by a former husband"); as Mrs Noble, she acted with her husband at Norwich from 1804 to 1806, and in the latter year became a chorus singer in the summer company at the Hay market Theatre.

At least three of Ann Murray's children were sired by Charles Murray. Maria Murray ap peared as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream at Bath on 11 March 1794, for her father's benefit. She subsequently became the first wife of the actor and author Joseph Leathley Cowell (1792–1863) and the mother of the scene painter Joe Cowell, the actor William Cowell, and the singer Samuel Houghton Cowell. Another of Charles and Ann Murray's daughters, Harriet Murray, born in 1783, acted as a child at Bath and made her first appearance at Covent Garden as Perdita in The Winter's Tale on 12 May 1798; in 1802 she married the actor Henry Siddons (the son of the famous Sarah Siddons); she is noticed in this dictionary under her married name. Charles and Ann Murray's son, William Henry Murray, born in 1790, played modest roles at Covent Garden in the first decade of the nineteenth century and then managed at Edinburgh for many years; he is noticed in The Dictionary of National Biography. Also, the Monthly Mirror of October 1801 re ported the death at Surinam, from yellow fever, of the eldest son of Charles Murray; but that child may have been the issue of Murray's first marriage.

Source: A biographical dictionary of actors, actresses, ... v.10.