Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Al G. Field #1


Scan11178, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

The Greatest of all Minstrel Show Proprietors!"

Posted by Buckles at 1/13/2009 06:35:00 AM

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Field also owned a piece of the Ben Wallace circus at one time.

13 January, 2009 10:22
Anonymous said...

Buckles, please tell shanan to change the showfolks link to showfolksclub.com we gave him the wrong address at gibtown thanks ray macmahon

13 January, 2009 17:49
Anonymous said...

Field wrote that he was with several circuses early in his career. He said he began with Thayer & Noyes as clown but he would have been a teenager. My copy of Rice's classic "Monarchs of Minstrelsy" states he began professionally in 1871 as a minstrel. Field states he was with Sells Bros. from 1875 to 1883 in minstrelsy and management (he does not appear in the sporadic Sells route books, however). The Sells' manager James Anderson joins Ben Wallace for his inaugural season in 1884 and Field follows along, assuming some management jobs and loaning the partnership $3000 at a crucial time as the show was being formed. He left the Wallace show in the fall of 1886 to start his immortal minstrel show out of Columbus, Ohio

Dick Flint
Baltimore

P.S. Buckles, I got my copy of "Monarchs of Minstrelsy from your mother when I visited you in Ruskin sometime in the 1970s. Inside is the immortal stamp "Babe W. PROPERTY" along with the signature of your father dated in Hugo, April 5, 1955 and the signature of "C.G. Sturtevant, Laredo, Texas, Oct 1, 1915." Nice ownership history!

14 January, 2009 00:58
Anonymous said...

Field had actually signed a contract with Duprez & Benedict for 1884 and then broke it when Anderson offered a larger salary to join Wallace & Co. Field went on to hire most of the ring talent away from Sells Bros. and other outfits. As a result, the Sells Bros. retaliated against them in various ways, bringing about the need for his cash loan.

14 January, 2009 08:55
Anonymous said...

Al G. Field, performer and proprietor of Al G. Field's Minstrels. Born Alfred Griffith Hatfield in Virginia on November 7, 1848. He had his last name legally changed to Field in 1881. Field's Minstrels was out from 1894to 1924. It continued after Field's death (in Columbus, Ohio) on April 3, 1921.

15 January, 2009 14:55

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