William Sampson (1859-1922) was a veteran comedian and character actor, along with being one of the founding members of Actors’ Equity. For more than a year Foster played the crusty father in The First Year (1920) at the Little Theatre.
William Clark Sampson was born 2 May 1859 in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
Among his first Broadway credits was in The Geisha (1896). He was a member of the Daly stock company and was in the original cast of The Easiest Way (1909), playing the role of Jim. The Witching Hour (1907) and David Harum (1900) were among the many other plays in which he acted.
Sampson was elected to The Lambs in 1903, and he was a member of The Players. In 1913 he was one of the original 23 council members when Actors’ Equity was created.
He and his wife, actress Mary Ann Webster, married in 1900, spent their summers near Boston and at the beaches of Minot, a section of Scituate, Massachusetts.
Sampson had been in poor health for some time. The day before his death he regretfully notified the management that he was too ill to appear that evening, the first time in 40 years on the stage he was unable to play his part. On April 5, 1922 he died of heart disease in his apartment in the Hotel Seymour. He was 62. Sampson is interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, next to his parents.