[Annotated Vernacular Album Kept by Miss Peggy Williams, Who Worked as a Clown in the Bates Brothers Musical Follies]

[Various locations, 1920. Very good.. [51] leaves, illustrated with 205 sepia-toned photographs in mounting corners, and another handful loose in the album or stored behind other images, about a third captioned in white pencil on the album leaves. Oblong quarto. Contemporary black cloth. Moderate soiling and edge wear. Minor occasional wear to photographs. Manuscript inscription on inside front cover reads, "Miss Peggy Williams. Bates Bro. Musical Follies." A personal vernacular photograph album kept by Miss Peggy Williams of the Bates Brothers Musical Follies, a popular touring circus in the first half of the 20th century. Williams performed as a clown for the Bates Brothers, some of which she documents in the present album. Williams likely worked mainly in the 1920s, although the range of time represented by the present album runs from roughly 1920 to the late 1960s. The album captures Williams and other members of the Bates Brothers Musical Follies, otherwise known as the Bates Brothers Musical Comedy Company while on tour through Nova Scotia and New England with stops in Halifax and Truro, as well as Keen, New Hampshire; Poughkeepsie, New York; Bennington, Vermont; Orchard Beach, Maine; and other locations.

The photographs depict the company taking to the road, standing beside advertisements dressed in circus attire with white face paint, practicing splits, and forming human pyramids in their down time. The images capture the troupe largely during recreation times, with no images of the performances themselves. Some of the images are studio portraits of the performers. Much of the album captures Williams in slightly later times, largely in a domestic capacity. These images include family portraits, casual family settings, Williams' mother, her dog, her husband, school portraits of unidentified children, and other images of babies and friends.

A pasted advertising sign visible in the background of a few photos touts the Bates company as "A jingling laugh show of mirth, melody, and dance." These signs indicate the main performers as Kimmie Evans and Dora Davis, which should help researchers more accurately date the pictures here. Peggy Williams must have acted in a supporting role, as she does not appear to be featured on the company's posters at the time of these photos. Bill Bates is pictured and named as the manager of the eponymous Bates Brothers Musical Follies in which Miss Williams got her start. Two pages refer to the set of the film Arctic City in which Williams played a small role. This set was located in Port Henry, New York. A wonderful primary source record of one woman's work as a clown during the Roaring Twenties.