1825-1871
The Invention of the Big Top
In 1825, Joshuah Purdy Brown (1802?-1834) revolutionized the circus business
and other traveling shows. He held his performances under a large, portable
canvas tent. This innovation allowed shows to move between cities quickly and
easily, go anywhere, stay as long or short as they desired, and perform rain
or shine. With this flexibility, Brown’s show could perform
and have an income six days per week. In 1825, the first season that Brown
and his partner Lewis Bailey used a tent, they traveled from Wilmington, Delaware,
into Virginia, stopping at Alexandria, Fredericksburg, Richmond, Norfolk, Lawrenceville,
and Lynchburg, and then up the Shenandoah Valley to Maryland and Pennsylvania.
All of these shows were performed under a tent: the only indoor location that
season was in Washington, DC.
By the mid 1830s, the canvas tent system had become commonplace. With this
mobility, owners now could schedule shows in 150 or more different cities in
a season, performing six days a week, but they now needed wagons to transport
the equipment as well as the horses to pull the wagons and personnel to drive
the wagons and erect the tent. The tent was a mixed blessing—show
in smaller places but created a greater overhead. Thayer remarks that, “the
tent added to the proprietor’s daily expense, and changed the relationship
between himself and his employees. Instead of erecting costly arenas
he now had the cost of wagons to carry his property, of horses to pull the
wagons and of teamsters to drive them. The performers and musicians,
theretofore on their own as to food and lodging, now traveled constantly with
the company” (Thayer, op.cit. 75).A circus now needed
a reliable income to offset the constant daily expenses. Greater mobility meant
that circuses could move faster but it also meant that owners had less time
to build up audiences and bring in revenue. There was growing pressure to bring
in audiences quickly and efficiently. As tents grew bigger, the performers
became more removed from the audience and the acts had to be more eye-catching
and more spectacular, which of course added to the expense of running and moving
the show.
A more interesting consequence of this change, however, is how the tent changed
the relationship between the audiences and the performers. Initially, circuses
were intimate shows and audiences were quite close to the performers in structures
that were often custom-built in that city. The show stayed around for weeks
or months at a time, mingling with the local populace. Audiences would become
familiar with the performers and shows would offer a variety of acts to bring
people back in. If the circus used permanent buildings, it might share the
facilities with theatres companies or music performances. These buildings might
also be quite intimate and the audience would be able to see small details
of each act. When the American circus broke away from this type of setting,
the relationship between audience and performer lost some of its intimacy and
relied more heavily on large-scale effects and more generic acts that would
please larger groups. European circus performances, on the other hand,
did not adopt canvas tents but continued to use existing buildings well into
the 20th century. Consequently, European circuses have much closer ties
to theatre and have maintained a greater emphasis on nuanced relationships
between performer and audience.
The arrival of the tent also complicated the already difficult task of promoting
shows to prospective audiences. Advertising materials had to provoke
excitement and anticipation of seeing a show that was around for one day
only. The printed bills that were used in the 18th, 19th and 20th
century had to give the populace the necessary information to catch their attention;
namely, title, date, and featured acts. John Bill Ricketts used printed
bills to advertise his show. Pepin & Breschard used printed bills
depicting an equestrian on a horse waving American flags. By 1822 with
the first steam-powered press, the cost of printing of the posters could be
reduced and the output of posters was increased.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the American circus had reached a level of
popularity in the country that no other form of entertainment could rival. This
was also true with its advertising. In the summer of 1983 edition of The
Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, Richard Flint states: “The
circus led the way in large, illustrated newspaper advertisements and virtually
developed the outdoor advertising business by the use of huge, colorful posters. As
early as 1833 a New Hampshire editor noted that the traveling shows were operating ‘on
a new plan … in order to excite the curiosity of the people….
Large show bills measuring seven or eight feet in length proportionately made
with cuts representing the remarkable docility of the lions and the great feats
of the monkey’ were now to be seen in the towns” (p. 214-215). As
early as the 1830s, large presses allowed the printers to combine large poster
together to produce billboard-size posters.
A National Institution
The Erie Canal opened in 1825, connecting the Hudson River at Albany to the
Great Lakes and allowing entrepreneurs and ordinary settlers alike began to
migrate westward in ever-greater numbers. By mid-century, there were
dozens of circuses, large and small, crossing the country, playing wherever
new populations justified a performance. By October 1849, Joseph A. Rowe
had already gotten all the way around Cape Horn to San Francisco and Sacramento. In
1847, Edmund and Jeremiah Mabie toured in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin and
purchased one thousand acres of land in Delavan, Wisconsin establishing the
first permanent winter quarters in the West. Thayer comments that,
The most important aspect of the Mabie purchase is that they established the
circus as a national institution. It took its place with railroad and
shipping lines, with publishing and horse-racing as entities known to virtually
everyone and it took the circus out of the hands of the men of Westchester
and Putman counties [New York] and made of it a national enterprise. Delavan
became the circus center of the West and thrived as such for almost forty years.
(Thayer, op.cit., p. 216)
During this same period, a Somers, New York, cattle dealer named Hachaliah
Bailey (1775-1845) (no relationship to Bailey of Barnum & Bailey) purchased
an African elephant, which he exhibited with great success. Bailey added
other exotic animals to his travels, which led to the creation of a traveling
menagerie. His popularity and prosperity convinced other farmers in the
Somers area (the same area that had produced Joshuah Purdy Brown) to go into
the menagerie business. In 1835, a group of 135 farmers and menagerie
owners joined forces to create the Zoological Institute, a powerful trust that
controlled thirteen menageries and three affiliated circuses. Shows under
their control traveled lucrative routes designed for efficient operations and
avoiding all competition. Although the institute itself did not survive
the financial panic of 1837, three of its survivors, John J. June, Lewis B.
Titus, and Caleb S. Angevine, were owners of a joint stock company that continued
to thrive. With their friends and relatives, they maintained a firm monopoly
on both the menagerie and circus businesses until 1877. They were able
to combine their capital to launch major expeditions abroad to capture exotic
new animals and buy out competing shows. They soon earned the nickname “the
flatfoots,” allegedly because they thwarted all competition by threatening
to “put their foot down flat” on anyone who tried to enter the
menagerie business without their permission.
P.T. Barnum
The most recognizable name in American circus history is P.T. Barnum (aka
Phineas Taylor Barnum) even though he had very little to do with the true circus
until he was sixty years old. There were many dramatic personalities in the
development of the American circus, but Barnum was undoubtedly the most dramatic. He
had an uncanny ability to attract public attention through curiosity, the bizarre
and the strange, and his advertising methods paved the way for modern marketing
techniques. He attracted the public’s attention by repeating a
slogan, idea, slogan or a phrase, and he knew that any publicity is better
than none when drawing the public’s attention to something new or obscure. He
also realized that the public should get its money’s worth, even if it
does not get precisely what it thought it was buying.
Noted historian George Speight, in his A History of The Circus, writes, “Phineas
T. Barnum is the bet-known name in the history of the American Circus. It
is typical of the man that this is the result of publicity rather than of achievement;
he had dabbled with circuses at an early stage in his career, but he was a
man with too much contempt for the public to devote his life to putting on
a show of real skill and merit; his genius lay in the publicity he got for
everything he touched” (p. 143). After years of museum management and
numerous financial setbacks, Barnum’s museum burned to the ground in
1868 and he went into a self-imposed retirement and started writing his autobiography,
called Struggles and Triumphs. In 1871, circus entrepreneurs William
Cameron Coup and Dan Costello urged him out of retirement and the three launched
the P.T. Barnum’s Museum, Menagerie and Circus, a traveling variety show
of which the “museum” part was an exhibition of animal and human
oddities, soon to become the integral part of the American circus known as
the Sideshow.
The railroads
After the canvas tent, the biggest change to the circus was the railroad.
The first steam-powered railway passenger service was in England in 1825 and
the steam-powered Tom Thumb locomotive was built in Baltimore in 1830.
Over the next forty years the railroads rapidly developed and connected the
entire continent, offering reliable, weatherproof, and fast transportation
across enormous distances.
Circuses had moved about from town to town by either horse-drawn wagons or
boats. This was slow, expensive, and not always reliable (wagons could
be delayed by bad weather or poorly maintained roads and rivers were subject
to unpredictable changes). But when a circus traveled by “the rails,” it
could jump hundreds of miles in a single night. The circuses had previously
moved great quantities of material and men from town to town in large caravans
sometimes referred to as “trains.” When movement on rails
became an option, many shows easily switched over to this form of flexible
and growing form of transportation. In a single season, a show could travel
very far from its winter quarters, to virtually any city in the United States
serviced by a railroad. It could also set up special excursion trains
which brought the audience to the show, greatly increasing exposure and drawing
in people who might otherwise never see the show.
The first recorded movement by rail of an American circus was in 1832, when
Charles Bacon and Edward Derious moved parts of their show in Georgia. There
were some minor attempts to move shows in 1839, 1845 and 1850, but it wasn’t
until the early 1850s that circus owners began to look earnestly at transporting
their shows on the railroad. Stone & Madigan Circus used the railroad
to move their show in 1851. In 1853 the Railroad Circus & Crystal
Amphitheatre became the first show to tour their entire season on rails. In
1855 the Great Western Railroad Circus followed suit. Two years later
Gilbert R. Spalding and Charles J. Rogers opened the “Spalding & Rogers
Railroad Circus” on nine custom-built cars. The 1857 tour started
in Washington D.C. and traveled through the states of Pennsylvania, New, Massachusetts,
Maine, the British provinces, Michigan, and Ohio. In Ohio they continued
their tour along the river on the Spalding and Rogers Floating Palace.
Of course, traveling by railroad did not exempt a show from technical and
atmospheric problems. In their history of the circus and the railroads,
Tom Parkinson and Charles Philip Fox write: “Even though the 1860’s
were showing a rise in railroad shows, playing more and profitable cities,
the end of the decade proved to be very difficult for the traveling circuses.
Of twenty-eight major circuses that opened, only six completed the season because
of the bad business resulting from endless rains.” (The Circus
Moves by Rail, Boulder, CO: Pruett, 1978. p. 4) The different
gauges on the rails were also not a trivial issue, and were not standardized
until the mid-1880s. Spalding and Rogers used adjustable axles on their railroad
cars to cope with this problem.
From the late 1860s through the early 70s, Americans witnessed an increase
in the number of circuses traveling by rail. The Dan Castello Circus was the
first circus to use the railroad to reach California by July of 1869, a few
months after the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads met up in Promontory
Point, Utah to form the first transcontinental railway. As the US population
moved west and urban areas expanded, the circuses followed. Traveling by rail
was more expensive than traveling by wagon, and the circus owners needed to
bring in more and more reliable income, so they worked hard to bring in more
audiences. As the circus grew more popular, the tents became bigger, raising
costs for materials and labor. The circus had to move faster, more efficiently, and
make longer jumps to play in lucrative areas. Fred Dahlinger, Jr. in
his article in Bandwagon; “The Development of the Railroad Circus
part two,” quotes an article from Clipper’s making special
note of the circuses on the rails in 1872. Dahlinger notes, “Many
of the largest shows during the coming season will travel almost entirely by
railroad, chartering for this purpose special trains, and visiting only the
larger cities and towns.” (Dahlinger Jr., “The Development of the
Railroad Circus” PT. 2:16) Smaller circuses still toured the country
and played to smaller audiences, but the railroad had changed the fabric of
the circus.
For many years, W.C. Coup has been erroneously identified as the person who
put the circus on the rails because of a reporter quoted Coup as stating he
was the first showman to make use of railroad cars and trains. We know
that this was not the first venture of moving a circus on the railroad. Coup,
however, can be given the credit “for being the manager who ushered in
a new era in the circus business.” Dahlinger, “The Development
of the Railroad Circus” PT. 2:17 The events listed below shows the great
advances the circus made with use of the tent and the railroads.
1825 |
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Joshuah Purdy Brown presents his show in a tent |
1825 |
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Hackaliah Bailey builds Elephant Hotel in Somers, New York. |
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Bailey erects a granite pillar in front of the hotel topped with a statue of "Old Bet"
|
1825 |
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John Quincy Adams is sworn in as 6th President of the United
States |
1825 |
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Completion of the Erie Canal |
1829 |
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Andrew Jackson sworn in as 7th President of the United
States |
1830-1860 |
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Railroad circuses maintain a smaller size compared to overland wagon shows |
1831 |
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Cyrus McCormick’s reaper |
1831 |
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John B. Green purchases the elephant Helen McGregor and adds her to his show
|
1832 |
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Joshuah Purdy Brown merges circus and menagerie |
1833 |
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Andrew Jackson sworn in as President for 2nd term |
1833 |
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American Anti-Slavery Society founded |
1833 |
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Isaac A. Van Amburgh enters a cage of wild animals in the Richmond Hill Theatre. |
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At the age of 22, Issac A. Van Amburgh, native of Fishkill, New York entered a cage at the
Zoological Institute in new York with a lion, lioness, leopard, leopardess, black-maned caped
lion, leopard and panther, thereby illustrating his dominance over them. He is considered the
first modern wild animal trainer in circus history.
|
1834 |
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First railroad to the west from Philadelphia |
1835 |
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A group of 135 farmers and menagerie owners in Somers NY create the Zoological Institute |
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On January 14, 1835, 128 men gathered at the Elephant Hotel in Somers to sign the Articles of
Association of the Zoological Institute. The economic panic of 1837 two years later all but
wiped out the Institute.
|
1835 |
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Circus wagons join the circus parades |
1835 |
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Joice Heth displayed by Barnum |
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Joyce, or Joice, Heth is billed as"Nurse to George Washington (the Father of our Country) The
Greatest Natural and National Curiosity in the World." Blind, appearing minutes from death, and
claiming to be 161 years old, she had been elaborately trained as a hoax by Barnum and his
assistants. She would ramble on incessantly about tales of young George and reflect upon
religious matters. Typically, Barnum denies the hoax publicly, but admits all ten years later
to journalist Albert Smith in England. Heth died on February 19, 1836. She helped launch
Barnum's career by giving him financial success, substantial press, notoriety, and the cache of
controversy.
|
1836 |
|
Arkansas 25th state admitted to the Union |
1837 |
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Michigan 26th state admitted to the Union |
1837 |
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Menageries go into a decline |
1837 |
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Martin van Buren sworn in as 8th President of the United
States |
1837 |
|
John Deere’s steel plow |
1838 |
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The earliest record of a circus troupe moving by rail from Forsyth to Macon, Georgia
|
1840 |
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Mabie's Circus hires Seth B. Howes as the manager and
director |
1841 |
|
William Harrison sworn in as 9th President of the United
States |
1841 |
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John Tyler sworn in as 10th President of the United States
|
1841 |
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First State Fair Syracuse, NY |
1841 |
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P.T. Barnum buys American Museum in Manhattan |
1842 |
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Lt. John Fremont maps the Oregon Trail opening the West to migration |
1842 |
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Tom Thumb makes his debut on New Year's day in New York City. |
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1841 Tom Thumb was born Charles S. Stratton on January 4, 1837 in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Billed as General Tom Thumb, he was initially exhibited as one of Barnum's curiosities.
Advertised as a "perfectly formed man in miniature," he was actually a midget with skeletal
proportions more similar to the average person than most midgets. Later in his career, he would
pose as various characters for short plays and sketches such as the Emperor Napolean, a
Scottish Highlander, a student at Oxford, an American tar-baby, and Frederick the Great. Later
programs with his wife, Lavinia, and other midgets appeared more like variety shows. He died on
February 19, 1920 at his home in Middleboro, Massachusetts at the age of 83.
|
1844 |
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United States annexes parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas
|
1844 |
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Dan Rice makes first paid appearance as a clown |
1845 |
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Florida 27th state admitted to the Union |
1845 |
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Texas 28th state admitted to the Union |
1845 |
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Wisconsin 29th state admitted to the Union |
1845 |
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James Polk sworn in as 11th President of the United
States |
1846 |
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Iowa 30th state admitted to the Union |
1846 |
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United States declares war on Mexico |
1846 |
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William F. ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody born in Iowa |
1847 |
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United States gains California, Nevada, Utah and parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico
and Wyoming |
1847 |
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United States annexes the Oregon Territory, Idaho, part of Montana, Oregon, Washington
and part of Wyoming |
1847 |
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James A. Bailey born in Detroit as James A. McGinnis July 4 |
1848 |
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Gilbert R. Spalding uses quarter poles for the first time |
1848 |
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Dan Rice forms the "Dan Rice Great Circus." Rice is billed as "America's favorite
clown." |
1848 |
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Discovery of gold in California |
1849 |
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Jenny Lind debuts in America |
1850 |
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California 31st state admitted to the Union |
1850 |
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Millard Fillmore sworn in as 13th President of the United
States |
1850 |
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Riverboat Circus's reach a height in popularity |
1850 |
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Sideshows added to circus |
1852 |
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Spalding & Rogers launch Floating Palace at a cost of
$42,000. |
1852 |
|
Albert Charles Ringling born.
|
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Albert Charles "Al" Ringling was born on December 13, 1852 in Chicago, Illinois. Al married
Eliza "Lou" Morris December 19, 1883. Al died January 1, 1907 in Baraboo, Wisconsin and is
buried at Walnut Hill Cemetery in Baraboo.
|
1852 |
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Harriett Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin published |
1853 |
|
Franklin Pierce sworn in as 14th President of the United
States |
1853 |
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Dan Rice buys elephant Lalla Rookh from Seth B. Howes for $5,000. |
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The elephant Lalla Rookh walked a wire 20 feet long, six inches in diameter and four feet off
the ground. The elephant was featured on Rice's One-Horse Show.
|
1854 |
|
Gus Ringling born. |
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August Albert "A.G.""Gus" Ringling was born on July 20, 1854 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Gus
married Anna G. "Anne" Hurley November 21, 1883. Gus died December 18, 1907 in New orleans,
Louisiana. He is buried at St. Joseph's Catholic Cemetery, Baraboo, Wisconsin
|
1855 |
|
J.C. Stoddard received a U.S. patent for a steam calliope |
1857 |
|
James Buchanan sworn in as 15thPresident of the United
States |
1857 |
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US Supreme Court issues Dred Scott decision |
1858 |
|
Minnesota 32nd state admitted to the Union |
1858 |
|
Otto Ringling born. |
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William Henry Otto "Otto" Ringling was born June 28, 1858 in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Otto never
married and died March 31, 1911 in New York. Otto is buried at Walnut Hill Cemetery in
Baraboo.
|
1858 |
|
Spalding & Rogers' Circus tent was used for the Lincoln and Douglas
debate when they were running for U.S. Senate. |
1859 |
|
Blondin crosses the Niagara Falls on a tight rope |
|
On June 30, "Blondin"
Jean Francois Gravelot made his first of many crossings of the niagara Falls. His
tightrope was 1,100 feet long and 160 feet above the Niagara river. The rope was stretched from
Prospect Park to the Canadian side. He was not allowed to place the rope closer to the
falls.
|
1859 |
|
Jules Leotard performs on the trapeze at Paris’ Cirque Napoleon wearing the
skin-tight costume, which now bears his name |
1859 |
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John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry |
1859 |
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Charles Darwin publishes treatise on evolution |
1860 |
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30,500 miles of railroad track in the U.S. |
1860 |
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First use of the abbreviation "Bros." by the Antonio Bros.
|
1860 |
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Pony Express delivers mail from Missouri to California in ten days |
1861 |
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Kansas 34th state admitted to the Union |
1861 |
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Confederate States of America is formed |
1861 |
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Assault on Fort Sumter. Civil War starts |
1861 |
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Abraham Lincoln sworn in as 16thPresident of the United
States |
1861 |
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United States introduces the passport system for international travel |
1861 |
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George Eliot publishes Silas Marner
|
1862 |
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President Lincoln makes the Emancipation Proclamation |
1863 |
|
West Virginia 35th state admitted to the Union |
1863 |
|
February 10, Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren were married at Grace
Church in New York City. |
1863 |
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President Lincoln establishes Thanksgiving holiday |
1863 |
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Roller skating introduced in America |
1863 |
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First stolen base in baseball by Eddie Cuthbert of the Philadelphia |
1863 |
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Alf T. Ringling born. |
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Alfred Theodore "Alf T." Ringling wsa born November 6, 1863 in McGregor, Iowa. Alf T. married
Adella Mae "Della" Andrews July 8, 1890 and was divorced in September/October of 1913. Alf T.
married Elizabeth Shuttleworth. Alf T. died October 21, 1919 in Oak Ridge, New Jersey. He is
buried at Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York.
|
1864 |
|
Nevada 36th state admitted to the Union |
1864 |
|
Atlanta evacuated and occupied by Sherman’s forces |
1864 |
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‘In God We Trust’ first appears on U.S. coins |
1864 |
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Karl Marx founds the first International Workingmen”s Association in London and New
York |
1864 |
|
Charles Ringling born. |
|
Carl Edward "Charles" Ringling was born December 2, 1864 in McGregor, Iowa. Charles married
Edith Conway October 23, 1889 in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Charles died December 3, 1926 in Evanston,
Illinois and is buried at Manasota memorial Park, Sarasota, Florida.
|
1865 |
|
Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President for 2nd term |
1865 |
|
Andrew Johnson sworn in as 17th President of the United
States |
1865 |
|
Trans-Atlantic cable completed |
1865 |
|
Winslow Homer paints Prisoners from the Front
|
1865 |
|
Lewis Carroll publishes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
|
1865 |
|
First professional baseball convention held in New York |
1865 |
|
First carpet sweeper comes into use |
1866 |
|
John Ringling born. |
|
John Nicholas Ringling was born December 2, 1866 in McGregor, Iowa. John married Mable Burton
in 1905 and she died June 8, 1929. After her death, john married Emily Haag Buck December 19,
1930. They were divorced July 6, 1936. John died December 2, 1936 in New York City and is
buried at the Ringling museum Grounds, Sarasota, Florida.
|
1867 |
|
Nebraska 37th state admitted to the Union |
1868 |
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1,367 state, county and district fairs held every year |
1868 |
|
Henry Ringling born. |
|
Henry George Ringling was born October 27, 1868 in McGregor, Iowa. Henry married Ida Delle
Palmer December 31, 1902. Henry died October 10, 1918 in Baraboo, Wisconsin and is buried at
the Walnut Hill Cemetery in Baraboo.
|
1869 |
|
Transcontinental Railroad completed |
1869 |
|
Ulysses S. Grant sworn in as 18thPresident of the United
States |
1869 |
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Dan Castello’s Circus and Menagerie makes first transcontinental tour
|
1869 |
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The Ringling brothers see their first circus in McGregor, Iowa |
1869 |
|
Colorado 38th state admitted to the Union |
1871 |
|
Barnum, Coup and Castello call their tented show
Barnum’s Great Traveling museum, Menagerie, Caravan, Hippodrome and
Circus
|
1871 |
|
Jesse James Gang makes their first train robbery |