Paul Dresser
Paul Dresser was an American singer, songwriter, and comedic actor of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to songwriting Dresser performed in traveling minstrel and medicinewagon shows and as a vaudeville entertainer. Dresser sold his songs through sheet music publishers, especially the firms in New York Citys Tin Pan Alley, and became a partner in the music publishing business.
He was born Johann Paul Dreiser, Jr. on April 22, 1858, in Terre Haute, Vigo County, Indiana, the fourth son of Johann Paul and Sarah Mary Schanab Dreiser. By the age of twenty he had changed his surname to Dresser. His father, a German immigrant from Mayen, was a weaver and dyer who eventually became the manager of woolen mill in Indiana. Dressers mother, born near Dayton, Ohio, was a Mennonite who was disowned after her elopement and marriage. After Dressers three older brothers died in infancy, he became the eldest of the familys ten surviving children. One of Dressers sisters nicknamed him Pudley because of his chubbiness. Dressers younger brother, Theodore Dreiser, would become a noted author.
Source: Wikipedia