The following information was excerpted from emails with Ron Button, of Cape Town, South Africa. If you have any information about this group, please contact us.

My story of the Prentice acrobatic family is not all that detailed but I'd like to start at the beginning if I may. My paternal grandmother kept a rooming house in London near a vaudeville theatre and her lodgers were mostly itinerate performers. One group of 3 or 4 called themselves the Prentice Troupe of Comedy Acrobats and they apparently took my father, then a teenager, with them when they left and they eventually toured the States. I have a couple of battered postcards of the troupe and other performers dated 1908 and 09 from San Fransisco; Mt.Clemens Mich. and Fargo N.Dak. taken at various fairs (one caption is Mason City District Fair). My father took the name Prentice in line with the others, all apparently named after the leader who appeared to be bearded and the eldest.

My father was born in 1885 so he would have been 20 to 25 at the time. I remember him telling me of his experiences in the San Fransisco earthquake.

The following is not part of a Prentice story but it will clear up the addresses on the cards. While [my father] was in the States, [his mother] immigrated [to Cape Town] with the family and he joined them here. He married my mother in 1920 and yours truly arrived 9 months later. She died in quite good health aged 96.

The postcards...

• Postcard - Fargo, N.D; Feb., 1903
• Postcard - Mount Clemens, MI; Sept., 1908;
• Postcard - Unknown location; 1910(?)
• Postcard - Unknown location; 1909

 

Questions/Comments? --- last updated 30 June 2001 ---