The Circus in America: 1793 - 1940

The Circus in America: 1793 - 1940

The American circus has a unique and often overlooked importance in American history. The first American circuses began shortly after the country was founded, and as the country’s population grew, moved West, went through the Industrial Revolution, and opened its gates to the world, the circus followed. Indeed, in many cases the circus provided people’s first view of new inventions, exotic animals and peoples, and popular entertainments. The history of the circus is in many ways a microcosm of the history of America.

The Circus in America: 1793-1940 surveys the history of the American circus over a 150-year period. It promotes serious scholarly research of the significant role the circus played in the growth of American society and popular culture. Historians trace the origins of the modern circus to late eighteenth century England, but the circus reached its height as a popular art form in nineteenth and twentieth century America. But to date there is no authoritative study, integrated with digital resources, that addresses this uniquely American cultural institution.Project director Lavahn Hoh and the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities are proud to present this digital research collection, which has a critical collection of archival, library, and museum resources, as well as essays, maps, timelines, images, and videos that help contextualize and interpret these materials.

The circus was a primary form of entertainment and information for the nineteenth century population, especially outside cities and larger metropolitan areas. By the beginning of the twentieth century there were more than 100 circuses traveling around the country, performing for as many as 12,000 spectators at each show. Our site focuses on six major circuses, chosen for their cultural impact on both other circuses and the entire entertainment industry:Phillip Astley, the father of the modern circus; John Bill Ricketts, the founder of the first American circus; Pepin and Breschard, who took the circus out West; P.T. Barnum, who brought the sideshow into the spotlight; Adam Forepaugh, who brought the Wild West under the big top; and the Ringling Bros., the undisputed kings of the Greatest Show on Earth.

The site contains artifacts from private collections, museums, archives, brought together for the first time for the use of scholars and students of history, popular culture, technology, business, drama, sports, art, and advertising. There are huge gaps and inaccuracies in our knowledge of circus history, in part because the documents and circus artifacts (route books, posters, newspaper stories, journals, and oral histories) have been scattered among many different repositories and part because there have been few systematic efforts to archive, analyze, and correlate these materials. The Circus in America makes it possible for the first time to study this singularly important influence on and reflection of American culture.

So, step right up, children of all ages! Come and witness the amazing sights and sounds, the bizarre and unbelievable feats, the glitter and spectacle of the American circus. See the thrills, the beauty, the excitement and laughter that happen when the circus comes to town.

Circuses

Since 1793, when the renowned British equestrian John Bill Rickets presented the first circus in America in a wooden amphitheatre in Philadelphia, it is estimated that there have been more than two thousand circuses in this country.  The American circus did not have the upper-class distinction of the theatre, nor a distinctive British quality, which was a selling point to a newly independent people, but the growth and popularity of the American circus in the early years can also be attributed to a time when horsemanship and physical endurance were part of everyday living.

  In the early days, circus performers operated their own shows, but as these shows became successful businessmen took them over.  Farmers turned-menagerie-owners around Somers, New York, quickly realized that they could increase profits by combining the two most popular traveling attractions of the day, the menagerie and the circus.  With the realization that fortunes could be made, many jumped on the bandwagon.

  By the late 1870s, P. T. Barnum, who had semi-retired from a lifelong pursuit of spectacle, illusion, and marvels, realized the popularity and financial potential of the American circus. Together with his associates, William Coup and James A. Bailey, he elevated the circus to America’s favorite form of entertainment—the greatest, the grandest and the richest.

Many circuses stand out in the history of the circus, such as the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey, Adam Forepaugh, Sells Bros., Cole Bros., and Hagenbeck-Wallace, but hundreds others have been lost in obscurity.  Many circuses have disappeared over the years because of low attendance, retirements, weather, war, accidents, depressions, lack of money; those that weathered the storms besetting the circus were able to survive for years if not decades.

Through our research we have selected several hundred Circuses and made them accessible in our database. Below are listed, in alphabetical order are a representation of the circuses in America. Click a circus to view a brief description, or alternative names, related people, circus type and itineraries. Links will be provided to additional information within the database, including images and a historical timeline.

People

The circus by its very nature is a transient business, and the people who work in it are also transient.  People run away to join the circus, but they don’t always stay.  Over the two-hundred year span of the American circus, thousands of people have been associated with it: owners and performers as well as workers (roustabouts), publicity crews, and teamsters all required to move, set-up, run, and sell a circus. The performers and owners are in the public eye, but it takes carefully coordinated effort from hundreds of people to make a circus successful.

Many names stand out in circus history as being great performers in the air, on the ground, or with animals: May Worth, Zazel,  Loyal Respinskis, The Hanneford family, Ella and Fred Bradna, Katie Sandwina, Issac A. Van Amburgh, Lillian Lietzel, and Alfredo Codona brought delights and thrills to audiences all over the country. Great owners such as the Ringling Bros., P. T. Barnum, William Cameron Coup, Samuel Gumpertz, Seth B. Howes, and Clyde Beatty organized, funded, cast, managed, directed, produced, and otherwise brought into being the spectacle and glitter of the American circus.

Through our research we have selected several hundred performers, owners, and workers in American circuses and made them accessible in our database. Below are listed, in alphabetical order the names of those individuals. Click a name to view a brief description, or alternative names and role in which they played in the circus. Links will be provided to additional information within the database, including images and a historical timeline.

Animals

Great Circus Elephants

What is still the main reason most people go to the circus, the only performing act without a single negative vote in the survey? The elephants! Part of the reason is the apparent contradiction between their enormous size and their paradoxically sensitive looks and disposition.
The largest Africans tend to be somewhat taller and leaner than their heavier cousins, the Asians. That distinction doesn't do much good in identifying domesticated animals, which may be younger and smaller than their potential maximum growth in the wild. Still, it's easy to tell the difference between an Asian and an African elephant: The African has huge floppy ears and a domed head, while the Asian has little ears and two bumps on top of its head. Africans can sport the longer tusks, over twelve feet if they are not broken off in battle or hacked off by poachers.
Among the elephants' more impressive characteristics are their tusks, the middle incisor teeth of the upper jaw; only some Asian females have no tusks. They will grow around two inches a year throughout the elephant's life, new ones replacing broken-off ones. Domestic elephants frequently have theirs trimmed or removed for safety purposes. Elephants are extremely light-footed and able to move in total silence, because they are basically walking on tip-toe, supported by a large pad under the heel that cushions the foot like a running shoe. There are two temporal glands on the elephant's head, from which a gummy substance may ooze when he or she is in an excited state. During "musth," which occurs only in mature males, the substance is thick and foulsmelling. It is apparently associated with sexual dominance during periods of competition for mating. Trainers agree that elephants can be unpredictably temperamental and dangerously violent during musth.
 Elephants are covered with a stiff bristly hair, too tough for razors. Circus elephants are given haircuts ever so delicately, with a blowtorch, and they seem to love it. Their hide is tough and thick, varying from three-quarters of an inch to three inches, but it is extremely sensitive. They can feel mosquitoes landing on them, and a hard slap or blow from the handle of an elephant hook by a trainer is most certainly painful. Most sensitive is the end of his nose, or trunk. The end of an Asian's trunk has a finger for grabbing objects; an African's trunk has two fingers. There is a large hole in the center of an elephant's skull at the base of its trunk, and many people think that the found skulls gave rise to the legend of the Cyclops, Homer's one-eyed giants. The trunk is a multi-purpose instrument for smelling, grabbing, and making a great variety of noises for communication. With it, an elephant can whistle, chirp, squeal, thump on the ground, trumpet, and rumble. Much of the rumbling is at a pitch too low to be heard by human ears, and carries mating calls over great distances to other elephants. The trunk may also be used for holding, blowing, or lifting water to the mouth. It can not be used like a drinking straw, however, since after all, it is primarily a nose.

A circus elephant will drink from 50 to 100 gallons of water a day, much more than little boys who dreamt of running away to the circus to water elephants could ever have managed. A circus elephant will also eat up to 100 pounds of hay and sweet feed every day. Its inefficient digestive system allows it to eat almost anything, half of which is wasted. Fresh grasses are a favorite, but peanuts, tobacco, stale donuts, and paper will do in a pinch. Elephants are sexually mature at around fifteen to twenty years; they can live up to seventy years. Pregnancy lasts about 23 months, and the average female may produce around four 200 pound newborns during her lifetime. 

ACTS

It's time! We're going to the circus. Our first sight is the midway, a gauntlet of colorful temptations that stretches out between us and the main entrance to the tent. In a building, it might only be a concession stand or two, but on a traditional tented circus lot, there is still a glimmer of what the big midways of a half-century ago must have looked like. There is much to see and hear, and still plenty of reason for arriving early on the lot: time for exchanging whatever free or reduced-price coupons we have managed to collect for tickets; time for the kids to pull us toward the moon walk,the snake pit, or the elephant rides; time to stock up on a supply of enough cotton candy and cherry snow cones to turn hair and fingers sticky and lips bright red; and time to take in the colored lights and brilliant bannerline paintings of exotic animals and clowns.

The bugmen who used to sell chameleons and bugs and fish are gone, and the old pirate sword has been replaced by the star-wars variety of light sword as the most popular souvenir, but there are still balloons, pennants, miniature bull whips, and a variety of other toys and souvenirs for sale. If we resist them all now, never mind: the candy butchers will continue to hawk their wares during the show, until someone in the family is persuaded to break down and buy. After all, concessions are a major source of income for both the show and the butchers, so Grandma is helping to keep the circus in business when she spoils her grandson.
If there are to be lions and tigers at all, the customary opening act for the traditional three-ring circus is the cage act in center ring. The self-supporting bars of the show cage, along with the tunnel cage or cage train bringing in the animals, are usually in place before the performance, because they take a while to set up. All other animal acts, with the exception of the elephants, are traditionally performed before the intermission as well, so they can be promptly fed and loaded following their final performances and on their way to the next stand. The elephants are traditionally the last act of the show, not only because they tend to require extensive clean up behind them, but also because they are often used in the teardown procedures after the final blow-off.
Circus performers, who will in the next two hours, stretch our notions of what the human body can do. They are called in circus lingo, “kinkers”, presumably because they must constantly be stretching the kinks and soreness out of their muscles.  It must be borne in mind that most performers stay with any one show for only a year or two, before moving on to other shows. In this way, each circus maintains its freshness and vitality.
In his A History of the Circus in America, George Chindahl identifies a bewildering two hundred or so circus acts. In Circus Techniques, Hovey Burgess simplifies our problem by dividing all the acts into three broad categories: vaulting, which includes leaping and flying; equilibristic, or balancing; and juggling. All three can be combined in a variety of ways, and all three can be done on the ground and in the air.

MUSIC

What is "traditional" circus music, anyway? Merle Evans defined it only as music written by circus musicians that is "brighter" than other music. The most often-played circus music is the march, but there are plenty of opportunities for waltzes, rags, serenades, intermezzos, Latin rhythms, smears and galops. Different styles of music characterize each act. Wild animals may be accompanied by fierce marches with a driving beat like "Bravura," or "Burma Patrol." Waltzes like "Over the Waves" and "Wedding of the Winds" might lull us through graceful trapeze performances. The pacing for a big slapstick clown act might be set by a galop like "Prestissimo," or "The Homestretch." Galop, incidentally, is the French spelling for the horse's gallop, which suggests both the source and the exhausting two-beat pace of the music.
There is no room any more for string instruments in "traditional" circus bands— that is to say in brass bands beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. Since the advent of the three-ring circus, the emphasis has been on drums and brass: the far-reaching clear tones of cornets, trumpets, trombones, French horns, baritones and tubas. Saxophones and the other reed instruments are debatable, but they have seen frequent use in the circus. Although their music is all original, the "traditional" Circus Flora Band includes a mean cajun fiddle and a full range of reeds. They harken back to an earlier era when such instruments were the only ones acceptable and available at any public concerts, and when they provided adequate volume under a single-ring tent.
Most "original circus music" was written in the twentieth century. Before that, circus musicians were too busy conducting to take time to write their own. In the early 1830s they played narrative songs, like "Yankee Doodle," "Billy Barlow," and "Jim Crow." N The first full band probably went out around 1830 with the Purdy & Welch Circus. But the first circus brass band didn't appear until Ned Kendall took his new trend-setting Boston musicians out with the New England Caravan in 1832, and they became an all-brass group at Allan Dodsworth's insistence in 1834. N Independent brass bands were the rule in circuses by 1837, often riding in the splendid new music carriages made for them. In the 1850s, the cornet began to replace the keyed "Kent" bugle, and Kendall was joined by Tom Canham, Patrick Gilmore and David W. Reeves, all among the major bandmasters of the country. Gilmore was responsible for setting a trend away from brass and towards a balance with reed instruments, and for introducing the big touring band era. As leader of Providence's American Band, Reeves also became a prominent composer. But for all intents and purposes, there were few circus bands as separate entities until the turn of the century.
Circus musicians are traditionally called "windjammers" because they "jam wind into cornets, clarinets, trombones, baritones, etc. for six to seven hours a day," according to Merle Evans, the most famous windjammer of all. N Contemporary windjammers formed themselves into an official organization of circus music lovers in 1971. Membership in Windjammers Unlimited, Inc. approached seven hundred in 1989, many of whom are non-playing lovers of circus music. The traditional circus musicians themselves are getting older and scarcer. Still, at their annual convention in 1989, a 140-piece band assembled to record a concert of music written for circus in years past, one of the Windjammers' stated goals. The purpose of the organization is simply to keep traditional circus music and circus concert music alive. They publish a bimonthly magazine called Circus Fanfare, and they have established a Windjammer's Hall of Fame. Ward Stauth, the Secretary-Treasurer of the organization, has gathered together an impressive collection of recorded and printed circus music that he hopes will form the basis for a new non-profit American Circus Music Museum in Corydon, Indiana. But as of this writing, the eventual disposition of his collection is not yet clear.

Communication

In 1901 an editorial in Billboard said, “One of the great general agents in the show business in this country, M.W. E. Franklin, has coined an aphorism which will be endorsed by every circus man. He says there are three P’s essential to the success of showmen. They are: Printing, Parade and Performance. These three requisites are intimately associated, and without the trinity being closely kept together and considered, the show, no matter how great in any one particular, must fail. Good printing first attracts the attention of the public; the parade arouses the interest of the multitude and draws them to the show; the good performance creates talk and favorable comment, which follow the show, throughout the season.” (Jack Rennert, “American Circus Posters” Circus World Museum (1984) Introduction.
Good communication was the key for much of the success of the American circus. The communication of the arrival of a circus or of a circus performance has changed since the first circus in America. Advertising methods of the American circus changed, as the shows got larger, covered more territory and experienced more competition. Advertising methods of the American circus started with announcements in the local paper and mushroomed into thousands of posters to advertise a one-day stand that would cover the sides of buildings, storefronts and any vacant space in the town. These posters or “paper” had to excite the town about the pending arrival of the circus and it’s short stay in their city. The circus poster had to give the most important information that was easy to read, arouse their excitement and eye catching. These posters had to have the title of the show (in bold letters), the date, and the feature attraction.
John Ringling stated in a September 1919 article from The American Magazine states: “The language of the circus poster is unique. Originally it was the result of opposition shows striving to outdo one another in startling announcements. Charles, who is the greatest scholar in the family, and an authority on words, created a new vocabulary and the style caught public fancy. We understand now, although we did not at the time, that we had stuck upon the child-appeal in another form. All children and all primitive minds, love big words, and love exaggeration. The boy who sees four dogs in the back yard invariably says there are a thousand dogs out there. When he offers to bet, he always wants to bet a hundred million billion dollars. He is not striving to deceive, but to express bigness in his own way.
The circus posters do the same thing: There is no effort to deceive the public—but to express the hugeness of everything in figures that carry the idea. If we have fifty elephants, and say a hundred, it pleases rather than offends. On circus day, everybody wants to think and talk in big figures, because on circus day we are boys and girls again, and we want to believe that there are a hundred million trillion elephants in the parade, and a billion funny clowns, and whole bushels and bushels of beautiful ladies on white horses.” (Charles Philip Fox, “A Ticket to the Circus” Superior Publishing Co. Seattle (1959) 45-46.

The second “P” essential for the success of the circus is the parade. The parade was a regular feature of the American circus when small towns would be awakened by gigantic processions featuring three or four separate bands, great herds of elephants, cages of wild animals, performers, performers on horseback, clowns and bringing up the end of the parade the steam calliope. ( kall-ee-yoap) The street parade, like the posters main purpose, was to advertise that the show was in town, and create excitement and enthusiasm. The street parade also affected the three senses of man—sight, sound and smell.

Transportation

As our frontier moved westward, it was the railroads that bore the great tide of Americans to the areas of new opportunities and hope. It was the railroads that linked together the diverse segments of this vast land so that together they might create the greatest economy the world has known."  --- John F. Kennedy

The story of the railroads is also the story of a growing America. Early development was limited largely to the coast and areas adjacent to navigable waterways. Development of the railroad changed that, unlocking vast stores of natural resources and allowing population centers to develop in areas previously considered inaccessible. As the nation grew and flourished, so did the railroads, stretching across the country's vast plains and mountains and up and down its coasts. Most of the nation's major cities and industrial centers can attribute their development in some measure to commerce generated by the railroad.Beginning in the 1820s, the railroad captured the imagination of Americans in much the same way as it was captured by the space race in the 1960s. Demand for fast freight and passenger trains paralleled the rise of the industrial revolution, as Americans in the industrial age correctly reasoned that speed and efficiency would lead directly to increased profits."
After the tent, the second greatest technological innovation was the use of the railroad in 1832 to transport the American circus. Prior to the use of railroads, circus and menageries owners moved their shows up and down the Eastern Seaboard via wagons and boats.  The wagon shows, sometimes referred to as “trains” had many of the components that would eventually become part of the railroad circus.  The circus men moved cage wagons, and baggage trains filled with the tents and their contents. Some of these shows grew to a size that would rival the later railroad shows; a hundred wagons and hundreds of horses.  Some of the early wagon shows included Spalding & Rogers Circus, Howes Great London show, the Van Amburgh Menagerie and the Adam Forepaugh Circus.  When the railroad became an option, these shows quickly moved to the new form of transportation allowing them more flexibility to go further, and play more cities.
The early American circus fully realized the full potential of the railroad to transport their shows, but the railroad could not handle the specialized movement of the circus especially when there was more than one gauge or distance between the rails.  The standard gauge in America and Canada is 4’-8.5”.   During the 1850’s and 60’s a typical railroad show could be called a “gilly” show—one that transported the show from the train to the lot by manual labor in rented wagons.  This method solved the problem of transporting the circus from the train to the lot.  This method or “gilly” show was also very labor intensive.  Equipment used on the show would be loaded onto a gilly wagon from a railroad boxcar, transported to the lot, and after the performance, loaded back onto the gilly wagon and transported back to the box car.  A circus transferring from one gauge to another would require the show to unload the cars, and transport the equipment to the waiting railroad.
The first record of the movement of the American Circus by rail occurred in 1832 when Charles bacon and Edward Derious moved parts of the show in Georgia. Other shows were moved in 1839, 1845 and 1850. However, it was during the 1850’s circus owners began to look seriously at moving their shows on the rails.  In 1851 Stone & Madigan Circus played the Mississippi valley using the railroad to make many of their moves.  1853, the Railroad Circus & Crystal Amphitheatre, 1854, Madigan, Myers & Barton’s Railroad Circus & Amphitheatre and Den Stone’s Original Railroad Circus and in1855, the Great Western Railroad Circus.  All of these shows were small in comparison to some of the wagon shows still moving over land such as Seth B. Howes.

In 1857, using their knowledge acquired with previous shows, Gilbert R. Spalding and Charles J. Rogers operated a new show called Spalding & Rogers Railroad Circus on nine custom–built cars.  The tour started in Washington D.C., traveled through Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, the British provinces and into Michigan.  To deal with the different changes in gauges during their tour, the shows’ cars used adjustable axles.  At the end of this one railroad tour, Spalding & Rogers did not return to the railroad.
Although Spalding & Rogers did not continue on the rails, many shows continued to move overland by wagons.  However, a number of circuses followed in the footsteps of Spalding & Rogers.  Dan Rice show, Howes & Robinson and Lewis Lent and others used the rails to move their shows.
In the 1860’s there were a number of shows that used the “new method” of railroading and the “old method” of moving their shows in the same season.
The first important effort to create a “railroad circus” occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century when a group of showmen operated what is generally considered the railroad circus. These first railroad cars were probably a combination of railroad type vehicle with flanged wheels that were able to ride on the tracks and on the roads. Because the railroad was not to fond of building specialty cars, the circus was free to design cars to suit their needs.
During the 1860’s the phrases “railroad show” and “railroad circus” came into popular use to differentiate the shows that traveled by road and those who traveled by rail. A typical railroad show of the 1860’s could be called a “gilly” show—one that transported the show from the train to the lot by manual labor in rented wagons. The railroad circus stumbled in its early development because it did not know how to do efficient and reproducible movements and the railroad could not handle circus movements especially where there was more than one gauge. Different gauge railroads meant transferring the circus equipment from one gauge railroad to another.

STRUCTURES

In its early years, the American circus erected temporary wooden performance spaces and would remain in that city until the attendance would drop off.  The circus owner would either sell the materials for lumber or use the site when they would return the next year.  Then the company would move to another city and build another performance space.  This process, in the first forty years of the American circus, was limited to about seven of the larger urban (New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, Richmond, Norfolk, Albany, Boston areas) that could support the cost of this type of operation.
In 1825, Joshuah Purdy Brown (1802-1934) revolutionized the circus business and other traveling shows with the introduction of the canvas tent.  The tent made it possible to go anywhere in the new territory, stay as long or short a time and perform “rain or shine.”  Tents not only allowed the circuses to perform in more cities, it also changed to the meet the requirements of moving the show.  More wagons were needed to transport the additional equipment, stock (work) horses other than show horses were needed to pull the wagons and more personnel were needed to erect the tent and drive the wagons.  The introduction of the tent also had a profound influence on the manager/owner of the circus.  Prior to the tent, the owner/manager only had to deal with a small number of cities in a season, now they had to deal with 150 or more different towns in a single season performing six days a week.
The tent size also grew exponentially with the audience.  As owners increased the size of audiences, tents grew in width, height and length. With the growth of the big top, ancillary tents where needed to accommodate additional personnel and equipment. Self-sufficient canvas cities traveled throughout the country.
In its early years, the American circus erected temporary wooden performance spaces and would remain in that city until the attendance would drop off. The circus owner would either sell the materials for lumber or use the site when they would return the next year. Then the company would move to another city and build another performance space. This process, in the first forty years of the American circus, was limited to about seven of the larger urban (New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, Richmond, Norfolk, Albany, Boston areas) that could support the cost of this type of operation. In 1825, Joshuah Purdy Brown (1802-1934) revolutionized the circus business and other traveling shows with the introduction of the canvas tent. The tent made it possible to go anywhere in the new territory, stay as long or short a time and perform “rain or shine.” Tents not only allowed the circuses to perform in more cities, it also changed to the meet the requirements of moving the show. More wagons were needed to transport the additional equipment, stock (work) horses other than show horses were needed to pull the wagons and more personnel were needed to erect the tent and drive the wagons. The introduction of the tent also had a profound influence on the manager/owner of the circus. Prior to the tent, the owner/manager only had to deal with a small number of cities in a season, now they had to deal with 150 or more different towns in a single season performing six days a week. The tent size also grew exponentially with the audience. As owners increased the size of audiences, tents grew in width, height and length. With the growth of the big top, ancillary tents where needed to accommodate additional personnel and equipment. Self-sufficient canvas cities traveled throughout the country.