He again went to California, where he died at Colton, that State, March 18, 1886. Mr. Rockefeller was born at Penfield, N. Y., March 14, 1843.
Charley Pettengill. Minstrelsy suffered an irreparable loss in the untimely death of this brilliant comedian; a comedian in fact, and versatile to a degree.
August 1, 1864, he opened with Buckley’s Serenaders in Boston, and became a great favorite at once. Subsequently he joined the Morris Bros. Minstrels in the same city, where he remained until February 13, 1866. September 10, following, he played a brief engagement with Sands and Herbert’s Minstrels, and the same month returned to his home in Albany to organize Pettengill’s Minstrels, which continued intermittently until September 22, 1869, when in conjunction with Johnny Allen and Delehanty and Hengler, a company bearing their names was launched at Brooklyn, N. Y.
In November following they opened for a run in New York, that terminated June 1, 1870.
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| JOHN GORMAN | JAMES GORMAN | GEO. GORMAN |
| THE GORMAN BROS.; ALWAYS ON TOP. | ||
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| AMOS ARNOLD | BILLY ARNOLD | FRANK ARNOLD |
| THE FAMOUS ARNOLD BROS.; A GREAT TREAT FOR BILLY. | ||
Mr. Pettengill is declared to have been the original “Nicodemus Johnson”; if he wasn’t, he certainly was the greatest. All honor to his memory.
Charley Pettengill was born in Albany, N. Y., where he died October 10, 1870; age 27 years.
M. B. Leavitt (Michael Bennett Levy) commenced his professional career as a minstrel in 1859; he was one of the end men, and appeared under his own name as M. B. Levy; Mr. Leavitt has been a comedian ever since—but not always on the stage.
To name all the minstrel companies he has been with would be a difficult matter, also all the things he did in them.
In 1867 he was a clown and comic vocalist; in 1872 he did a stump speech on the occasion of his last appearance as a “black-face” performer. There were any number of “Leavitt’s Minstrels” in the 60’s.