Jack Prentice
Jack Prentice. Photograph: Dale Morton, Ancestry.
Charles John “Jack” Prentice was born on 5 June 1876 at Balranald, New South Wales, to Charles John Prentice and Louisa Carter. He married Sarah Ann Troy at Angledool on 1 October 1899. They had four sons.
Before coming to the Ridge, Prentice worked for Cobb & Co. and did station work, including boundary riding on Angledool Station. He apprenticed in butchery Angledool, learning under his uncle.
By 1907 he had opened a butcher’s shop at Old Town, Lightning Ridge. In 1909 Prentice applied for a Western Lands lease at New Town and moved over in about 1910 as settlement in the surveyed town was encouraged and Old Town declined. His shop stood on the corner next to what would later be Dawson’s store (and later Maudes, Outback Kitchen); the latticed building was removed in May 1981.
Prentice drew a 10,000-acre Western Lands block, “Wellwood”, on the Walgett Road in 1910. The family left Lightning Ridge in March 1914 to settle there. He sold the Ridge butcher’s business to George Beckett in May 1914.
On 14 July 1914 Jack and Sarah’s eldest son, Charles John (Jack, Jr.), was accidentally shot while kangaroo shooting near the Ridge by Bill Kirkland, Prentice was mistaken for a kangaroo. The boy was taken to Walgett and then to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, where he died several weeks later. A coroner’s inquest found the shooting to be accidental.
Jack Prentice took part in the New Town cricket side in 1914 and was appointed Justice of the Peace in April 1922. A court matter in October 1923 concerned damage to his Wellwood mailbox.
Jack Prentice died at Walgett on 6 October 1944, aged 68, and was buried at Walgett Cemetery.
Signature of Jack Prentice, sourced from a petition to resist the move from Old Town and The Flat into the surveyed town.
Article: Research by Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: Walgett Spectator, 28 October 1910, 25 September 1913, 26 March 1914, 16 April 1914, 21 May 1914, 6 August 1914, 1 December 1921, 27 April 1922, 18 October 1923; ‘Shot by Mistake - Taken for Kangaroo’, The Sun, 7 June 1914, p. 9; Lightning Ridge: The Land of Black Opals, Ion L. Idriess, 1940; The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, p. 108; Lightning Ridge - The Home of the Black Opal: Unique to the World, Gan Bruce, 1983, p. 51; A Journey With Colour: A History of Lightning Ridge Opal 1873-2003, Len Cram, 2003, pp. 49, 131-132, 149.