| Tyrone Power | |
| Birth Name: | William Grattan Tyrone Power |
| Birth Date: | 20 November 1797 |
| Birth Place: | Kilmacthomas, County Waterford, Ireland |
| Death Place: | North Atlantic Ocean |
| Spouse: | Anne Gilbert |
| Children: | 6, including William |
William Grattan Tyrone Power (20 November 1797 – 17 March 1841), known professionally as Tyrone Power, was an Irish stage actor, comedian, author and theatrical manager. He was an ancestor of the American actors Tyrone Power Sr. and Tyrone Power and is also referred to as Tyrone Power I.[1] [2]
Born in Kilmacthomas, County Waterford, Ireland, Power was the son of Tyrone Power, reported to be “a minstrel of sorts”, by his marriage to Maria Maxwell, whose father had been killed while serving in the British Army during the American Revolutionary War.[3] His father was related to the Powers who were of the Anglo-Irish landed gentry[4] and to George de la Poer Beresford, 1st Marquess of Waterford.[3]
The young Power took to the stage, achieving prominence throughout the world as an actor and manager. His major break came when fellow Irishman Charles Connor died of apoplexy in 1826, and he took over many of his stage Irish parts. He was well known for acting in such Irish-themed plays as Catherine Gore's King O'Neil (1835), his own St. Patrick's Eve (1837), Samuel Lover's Rory O'More (1837) and The White Horse of the Peppers (1838), Anna Maria Hall's The Groves of Blarney (1838), Eugene Macarthy's Charles O'Malley (1838) (see Charles Lever), and Bayle Bernard's His Last Legs (1839) and The Irish Attorney (1840). In his discussion of these works, Richard Allen Cave has argued that Power, both in his acting as well as his choice of plays, sought to rehabilitate the Irishman from the derogatory associations with "stage Irishmen" ("Staging the Irishman" in Acts of Supremacy [1991]).
He had a number of notable descendants by his wife Anne, daughter of John Gilbert of the Isle of Wight: Anne Power is buried in the churchyard of St Mary The Virgin Church in High Halden, Kent, England.
Tyrone Power was lost at sea in March 1841, when the disappeared without trace in the North Atlantic.[6]