Ada Clare

Ada Clare (pen names, Clare and Ada Clare; July 1834 – March 4, 1874) was an American actress and writer.

Life and career Ada Agnes Jane McElhenney was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1834. She grew up under the care of her maternal grandfather as part of an aristocratic Southern family,

She moved to New York City in 1854, took up acting, engaged in a widely publicized liaison with pianist and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and bore a son out of wedlock. she frequented Pfaff's Cellar, where she met Henry Clapp, editor of the Saturday Press, an iconoclastic weekly magazine of the arts., Clare was devastated, and returned to acting in a provincial stock company.

Clare suffered a dog bite from a Poodle in her theatrical agent's office and died from rabies in 1874.

Ada's writing for the Saturday Press is included in The New York Saturday Press Omnibus Edition, published by funsub books in 2025.