Ringlingville USA

It was while they were growing up in McGregor, Iowa, and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, that the Ringling Brothers developed both the enthusiasm and the essential skills for operating a circus. In those early years they also learned about frugality and perseverance from their father, who spent most of his adult years struggling to earn a living for his large family.

August Frederich Rungeling was twenty-two when he arrived in Milwaukee in 1848, the year Wisconsin achieved statehood. Rungeling had been living in Canada, having arrived there from Hanover, Germany, in 1847.² A harness maker by trade, he quickly found a job in the collar-making department of a company that manufactured horse harnesses, saddles, and related leather equipment in this bustling port city nestled against Lake Michigan.

Not long after his arrival in Milwaukee, Rungeling’s father, Frederich, his mother, Rosina, and his sister, Wilhelmina, joined him there. The harness-making business prospered. Horses were everywhere, and each one needed a collar and a harness.

Young August learned English quickly, and after a year he could read English well and speak it with scarcely an accent. He changed the family name from Rungeling to Ringling to make it easier to spell and pronounce.³

August Ringling advanced rapidly in his work, becoming a foreman at the harness factory. Then cholera struck, claiming his father in the early 1850s. August’s mother, heartbroken and in frail health, died a few months later.

August married Salome Marie Juliar on February 16, 1852. The Juliars had arrived from Ostheim, France, in 1844 and lived on a farm near Milwaukee. Salome’s sister and brother-in-law, the Gollmars, were living in Chicago, and August and Salome soon joined them there.⁴

The depression deepened in 1858. With no alternative in sight, August Ringling sold many of his goods at bargain rates. He even began selling groceries “at hard time prices.”⁷

In June 1858 the third Ringling son, William Henry (called Otto), was born. Otto was the only Ringling child born in Baraboo. Wisconsin didn’t substantially recover from the 1857 depression for three more years—too late for the Ringlings’ Baraboo harness shop. With three children and a wife to support, August Ringling was once more on the move. Sometime in 1860 the family moved to McGregor, Iowa, across the Mississippi River from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

When the Ringlings arrived in McGregor, the need for harness makers was great. In December 1862 the North Iowa Times mentioned August Ringling’s harness shop: “A. Ringling advertises his harness shop which had been removed from his old stand on Arnold’s corner, to the new building two doors east of Walter Bros. He is an excellent workman.”⁸

Four more sons were born to the Ringlings in McGregor: Alfred Theodore (called Alf T.) in 1863, Carl Edward (called Charles) in 1864, John Nicholas in 1866, and Henry William George in 1868.

In the 1850s Baraboo was a small, isolated farm community located north of Madison in the hill country referred to as the Baraboo Bluffs. It was county seat of Sauk County, and its post office had opened on March 8, 1847. In 1855 one of the largest enterprises in town was the Bassett and Sanford flour mill, which ground up to twenty thousand barrels of wheat flour each year. Like the local woolen mill and sawmill, it was water powered by a dam on the Baraboo River.¹

Many of the recent arrivals in Sauk County were farmers looking for land and a future in this new region. Sauk County saw phenomenal growth, from 102 persons in 1840 to 4,372 in 1850.

NOTES

1. Bob Dewel, “Baraboo Always Was a Good Dam Town,” Baraboo (Wisconsin) Sun, March 26, 1998.

After the war, demand for harnesses again increased, and in 1867 August once again opened his own harness shop. An 1867 newspaper ad stated: “A. Ringling, half way up Main Street, is turning out some of the handsomest as well as the most substantial harness that McGregor citizens or visitors ever looked upon or used. … Harness, collars, saddles, bridles and repairing of all kinds. Go to A. Ringling, nearly opposite Murray House.¹⁰

In 1870 Al and Gus worked in their father’s shop, learning the trade of harness making. A newspaper ad from that year indicated that August Ringling’s harness shop was now “Opposite Walter Bros., McGregor.”11 But even with the two oldest sons’ labors, the harness shop did not provide enough money for the family to make a decent living, and the Ringling family was having a tough time making ends meet. In an oral history, Gretchen Daubenberger, a longtime McGregor resident, recalled an incident when McGregor’s practical nurse and midwife called on Daubenberger’s mother. The nurse mentioned that “the Ringlings up the Hollow have just had another baby. There isn’t a second sheet for the mother’s bed, nor a stitch of clothing for the new babe. It is a pitiful state of affairs.” Daubenberger’s mother gave the nurse used baby clothes, some fresh bed linens, and much of her morning bakery to be delivered to the Ringling family.¹² Living in such dire poverty no doubt had a great influence on the Ringling Brothers later in life.

Before and after the Civil War, circuses traveled mainly by horse-drawn wagons; a few traveled by rail, and several traveled by steamboat on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The steamboat shows visited most towns along the Mississippi between New Orleans and St. Paul, Minnesota, and McGregor was a popular stopping place.

During the summer of 1866 three circuses visited McGregor.¹³ In 1867 four circuses visited the town.¹⁴ The seven Ringling boys thus had ample opportunity to see circuses loading and unloading, setting up tents, and preparing for their shows—sights that surely captured their active imaginations. On May 23, 1870, the Sensation Circus, advertised as “The Great Show of the Period,” came to McGregor. George W. De Haven was owner and manager. There were horse acts and acrobats, “three great clowns,” a “fully educated horse,” and a balloon ascension that was scheduled just ahead of the afternoon show. Unfortunately, disaster struck the balloon ascension; the wind blew the balloon into the river, and the performer drowned.¹⁵

In Life Story of the Ringling Brothers (published in 1900), Alf T. Ringling included four chapters about the brothers’ adventures in McGregor. He described a circus boat coming to McGregor in the 1860s with its elephant and circus performers. “It was a great day in the lives of these boys, who for two weeks had read and reread the crude posters on the walls of McGregor, which announced that on this particular morning a circus was coming to town.”¹⁶

Several researchers have tried to determine which circus it was that Alf T. remembered. Circus historian Stuart Thayer concluded that Alf T. must have combined his memories of Dan Rice’s riverboat circus, which visited McGregor on June 21, 1869, with John Stowe and Company’s Great Western Circus, a wagon show that arrived in McGregor on September 7, 1869.¹⁷ Apparently, the boys had gotten free tickets for the Stowe show because their harness-maker father had repaired some equipment for the “Cannonball Juggler,” one of the performers.¹⁸

In an oral history, Clara Curtis Otis, formerly of McGregor, recalled stories she had heard about the Ringling boys’ early circuses in McGregor:

[There] was a parade down Main Street and over to a barn. [The Brothers] had an outside animal show before admittance to the performance. The animal show consisted of cats, dogs, several rabbits, two tiny kittens with a sign “from Timbuctoo”; a monster bull frog with a sign “captured at great risk from the depths of a far-away swamp from which no other frog-collector ever emerged alive”; a crowing rooster with tail feathers colored a bright red; a bantam pullet which laid an egg while the neighbors were seeing the animals; some tadpoles swimming in a glass container, in which, to the amazement of the boys, some tiny frogs emerged in time for the show; a white hen and rooster, “the only ones in captivity”; some English sparrows, “imported from an unnamed Pacific Island”; and Mrs. Ringling’s canary, “the head of the great dynasty.” The boys performed on swings and walked across a long beam. The dogs set up a great barking, the cats became frightened, and pandemonium seemed about to break loose when the elder Ringling boy fed them with some meat, which he was supposed to bring home for supper.²⁰

The Ringling boys enjoyed acrobatics and practiced often. Sally Veit Scarff, a McGregor historian, recalled a story she heard from her father, Charles L. Viet Sr., about the Ringling boys: “The boys ran a wire from Marquette peak [formerly North McGregor, now Marquette] to the Berry Hotel, and proceeded to walk down it. Everyone watched intently, certain they would kill themselves, but they emerged at the bottom, unscathed and smiling.”²¹

Although the harness-making business appeared brisk, trouble once again loomed. Factory-made harnesses and horse collars cheaper than those made by hand were arriving on the market. By 1871 August was out of the harness-making business, and in 1872 he moved his family to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

Gus, then eighteen, stayed behind in McGregor to work in another harness shop. This was the first time the family was separated.

In Prairie du Chien August and oldest son Al worked as carriage trimmers for the newly formed Traner Carriage Works, doing specialty leather work for carriages that could not be done with machines.

Many circuses traveled the Mississippi River after the Civil War, showing in river towns such as McGregor, Iowa, where the Ringlings grew up. The Brothers were so enthralled with the circuses they saw there that they were soon offering circus “performances” for their childhood friends. PH 1006

McGregor was a bustling place the year before the Civil War, with nearly two thousand residents. Its location on the Mississippi made it an entry point for settlers and others going west. The town was also a shipping center for wheat that was barged south on the river. Fortunes were made as this river town stored wheat for river shipment from as far as 150 miles to the west.

In the 1860s McGregor had from twenty-eight to thirty-two saloons scattered from one end of town to the other. Along with the saloons, McGregor “had its share of ‘shady’ characters and because of this could be imagined to have the usual brawls and arguments.”1 The McGregor Brewery, owned by J. F. Hagensick, was four stories high and brewed ten thousand barrels of beer a year, probably enough to meet the needs of the local saloons.

McGregor also had six churches. August Ringling was one of the charter members of the German Lutheran Church, organized in 1862.

NOTES

1. Lucy Rodenberg Holst, Echoes of McGregor’s Past, vol. 2, (McGregor, Iowa:Stone Balloon Books, 1994), p. 27.

Al also dazzled onlookers by balancing a breaking plow on his chin. The plow—there were many sizes and shapes available by this time—had a wooden frame and weighed no more than seventy pounds. Historian Alvin Harlow explained how he did it: “Al would seize the plow by the handles, swing it into the air above his head, then lower it until a chalk mark in the middle of the brace was centered as nearly as possible on his chin—moving it a little this way and that to get a perfect balance—then let go the handles for a few moments. It fairly took the onlookers’ breath away, and well it might.”²⁵

The next year August and his family moved to Stillwater, Minnesota.26 August couldn’t find a job in Stillwater, however, and he quickly moved the family back to Baraboo and began working for his brother-in-law, Henry Moeller Sr., a wagon maker, who had a shop on Fourth Street.²⁷ Henry Moeller had also married one of the Juliar sisters, and now the three sisters were once more together in the same town.

August Ringling worked about a year with Henry Moeller before again opening his own harness-making shop, this one on the corner of Third and Broadway. An ad for his establishment declared, “A. Ringling, manufacturer and dealer in harnesses, collars, trunks, valises, robes, blankets, whips, etc. Carriage trimming a specialty. Sign of the big collar.”²⁸ Also in 1876, son Otto, now eighteen, was working in Racine at a wagon and carriage company.

Two years later a fire destroyed nearly an entire city block in Baraboo and leveled August’s harness shop. He moved his business to another site and was soon winning prizes at the Sauk County Fair for his high-quality harnesses.²⁹ By this time Charles and Alf T. were both old enough to work alongside their father.

In 1880 logging continued in the northern reaches of the state, and farming in southern and central Wisconsin had begun to shift from growing wheat to dairying and cheese making.³⁰ Three of the Ringling boys, Al, Gus, and Otto, had left home. Al continued his strong interest in the circus, and Alf T. and Charles, no doubt with their mother’s strong encouragement, discovered that they had musical talent and began following those interests, taking up horns and the violin.

The many challenges the Ringling family faced as August’s harness-making business alternately thrived and faltered brought the family close together. They learned how to depend on each other and to work together. They knew what it was like to not have enough to eat and to have little clothing to wear. The boys learned to save what little money they had for future contingencies. All these skills would later prove invaluable as they built and maintained their circus empire.

Although the Ringling boys knew harness making and knew it well, they had seen the struggles their father faced as he moved the family from town to town trying to eke out a living. Show business couldn’t be any harder than harness making, or so it seemed to Al, John, Alf T., and Charles as they considered starting a traveling hall show and organizing a circus.

The Idea for a Circus: 1848–1881