The circus! Elephants, lions, tigers and bears! Acrobats on the high wire and clowns in the center ring!
Magic happens under the Big Top!

             So step right up, children of all ages! Come see the circus!

Where it all began.....   

While Philip Astley is known as the father of the modern circus, it was John Bill Ricketts who brought it to Philadelphia from London in 1793. He had only one equestrian act (his wife who rode two horses at once at full gallop) a brother who was a tumbler and a rope dancer.  Ricketts took his circus up and down the east coast. Victor Pepin and Jean Baptiste Breschard built the Walnut Street Theatre for their circus in 1809,  with 8 equestrian riders in lavish costumes performing military exercises to music. Pepin, an American, and Breschard a Frenchman, were the first to take the circus west over the Appalachians. 

Philip Astley

John Bill Ricketts

Walnut Street Theater

P.T.Barnum added the sideshow to the circus menu and brought the first true white elephant into the center ring. He also hosted the wedding of Charles Stratton (General Tom Thumb), 36” tall and Lavinia Warren, 32' tall on February 10, 1863 in New York. President and Mrs. Lincoln invited them to spend their honeymoon in the White House.   Adam Forepaugh included the Wild West Show under his circus tent but tainted the good name of the circus by fraudently using liquid plaster to coat an elephant of normal hue, passing it off as a white elephant. Because the albino elephant is not a true white but a very pale gray, Forepaugh's fake was more popular because of its “snow white” exterior. It spurred a series of fraudulent sideshows around the country. 

Three major circus companies were formed along the Wabash River...the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, the Al G. Barnes Circus and the American Circus Corporation. The Barnes show was started by Alpheus George Barnes Stonehouse in 1895 when his name was bigger than his circus that consisted of a pony, a phonograph and a stereopticon. When it grew to a suitable size he merged with the Sell-Floto Circus. In 1907 Ben Wallace bought the Carl Hagenbeck Circus to add to his own. But a series of tragedies plagued the show and Ben sold his interest in it and, in 1919, it became a part of the American Circus Corporation.

                                   The worst circus train wreck in history …..

 happened in Hammond, Indiana in the pre-dawn hours of June 22nd, 1918. An empty troop train, its engineer asleep at the throttle, plowed into the Hagenbeck-Wallace circus train parked on a railway siding. Fire broke out when the kerosene lanterns in the sleeping cars ignited trapping many inside. Eighty-six of the three hundred passengers died, all circus performers and workers. When the news broke, circus performers and roustabouts from Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey and others in the area rushed to lend a hand. They were joined by the good people of Hammond who provided food and clothing for the survivors.

 
In 1929 Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus bought out the American Circus adding five major shows under one banner. Hagenbeck-Wallace got a brief new lease on life in 1935 but ended its run 1938. The building that housed it is now home to the Circus Hall of Fame and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987. Every July Peru hosts the only Circus Heritage Parade in the US.

The largest and most famous circus in the world began in the Ringling's backyard in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The seven little Ringlings fell in love with the circus when they watched one being unloaded from a truck on a trip to McGregor, Iowa. Five of the seven, sons of German immigrant August Rungeling (Ringling), decided to have one of their own. In the beginning it looked more like vaudeville with two of the brothers dancing, two playing musical instruments and one singing. But the neighbors paid to watch and Albert, Otto, Alfred, Charles and John took their “huge box office profits” and bought evening suits and top hats. Soon they were able to add a wagon, a horse (rented) and a partner, showman “Yankee” Robinson who once had his own circus. They opened their first show on May 19, 1884. Robinson died during thie first season but, by then, they had grown to all seven brothers (Henry and Gus), a donkey, a Shetland pony and the foundation for their first trick act. In 1887 the “Ringling Bros. United Monster Shows ,Great Double Circus, Royal European Menagerie, Museum, Caravan and Congress of Trained animals” hit the road!

The Ringlings, all of them!

“Yankee” Robinson

Show posters

The brothers each found their niche..Alfred did the publicity, Gus arranged advertising, Albert picked the acts, Charles produced the show, and Henry evaluated response from the audience while right in the seats. Otto managed the money and John skillfully routed their performance sites so that they avoided direct clashes with their competition. He also made sure even the most out-of-the-way small towns got to see the circus. They even divided the country with Barnum and Bailey, their closest rival so they wouldn't compete for the same territory. By 1900 they had one of the largest traveling shows in the country and started buying up other smaller circuses. Then, in 1907, they bought Barnum and Bailey!

By 1910 the Ringling Bros. had more than 1,000 employees, 335 horses, 26 elephants, 16 camels and other animals by the score and traveled in 92 rail cars with their Barnum & Bailey acquisition adding about the same quantity. It was truly the “Greatest Show on Earth”. Baraboo continued to be their winter quarters until 1919 when they moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut and then to Sarasota, Florida.

                 ...and where it goes when it snows!

Two of the Ringling brothers had their eye on Sarasota as early as 1910. John and Charles  bought over 67,000 acres as investment property. John and his wife Mabel made it their winter retreat and then, in 1925, had architect Dwight James Baum design and build Ca d'Zan (House of John) their fabulous Venetian style mansion where they lived for the rest of their lives. In 1936 the entire estate was donated to the State of Florida. Charles and Edith Ringling moved there in 1936. Their home is now part of the University of Florida New College.

On March 25, 1927 John Ringling announced that the winter quarters of Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus would move to Sarasota on 200 acres on the east side of town. It stayed there for 25 years. Then, on July 16,1956, they took down the Big Top tent for the last time in Pittsburgh. The circus was forever changed and now it would be arenas and auditoriums instead of canvas and sawdust.  Winter quarters moved to nearby Venice, Florida.

Everywhere the circus went it left footprints and memories...
                                ... and it is there in the circus towns that the Big Top lives on.

The Day the Clowns Cried....

July 6th, 1944 promised to be a lovely early summer day in Hartford, Connecticut.  Over 8,000 people, mostly women and children, were in their seats enjoying a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus matinee performance. The show was already under way and the ring was cleared of performers and animals in preparation for the Great Wallendas. Karl Wallenda had just finished silently searching the area to make sure nothing was amiss when he saw the small flame climbing up the rope seam of the big top. He pointed it out to the bandleader Mark Evans who called a coded warning to the ringmaster and began playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever”. This was the traditional signal to the rest of the troupe that a serious problem had arisen and an orderly evacuation was needed.

But, someone yelled “Fire” and 8,000 people, in a state of panic, rushed the exits making it almost impossible for anyone to get out or anyone outside to get in to help them. Emmett Kelly said”it was the all-time nightmare of the circus business”.  The bravery of the circus personnel was outstanding. The animal handlers got the elephants and big cats secured in their cages to free up the animal chutes as escape routes. Others led people out through the performer's exit. Outside others formed a bucket brigade to keep the flames from spreading realizing they could do nothing for the big tent. They stayed at their posts until the fire department took over. It took only six to eight minutes for the big top to collapse in flames trapping those still inside with no way to escape.

The miracle was that only 168 people died that day. The tragedy was that so many of them were children.

On July 6th, 2005, sixty-one years after the tragedy, a memorial was dedicated to the victims. Laid out in a field to mark the exact location of the tent that burned, it has a “center ring”: of four granite benches and a bronze disk with the names of the victims and their ages. Flowering dogwoods mark the site of the side and end walls of the circus tent.

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