The Samuel Nichols tented circus was the first circus to appear in Wisconsin Territory. It opened in Racine on August 2, 1843, five years before Wisconsin became a state. RACINE ADVOCATE, AUGUST 2, 1843. WHS MICROFILM P28649
In the late nineteenth century the Midwest was still a frontier, with immigrants and other settlers continuing to arrive by the thousands. Most people lived on farms and in small towns. Winters were miserably cold, summers were humid and hot, and life was hard, with little opportunity for entertainment. The circus, with its exotic performers, beautiful horses, wild animals, and low admission cost—fifty cents for adults, twenty-five cents for children—was the major entertainment in many communities, especially rural towns.
The Samuel Nichols tented circus was the first circus to appear in Wisconsin Territory. It opened in Racine on August 2, 1843, five years before Wisconsin became a state. RACINE ADVOCATE, AUGUST 2, 1843. WHS MICROFILM P28649
Modern-day circuses have their beginnings in the late eighteenth century in England, and the first known circus in the United States showed in 1793 in Philadelphia. These early circuses did not travel, had but one show ring, and performed inside a building. It wasn’t until 1825 that a New York circus man, J. Purdy Brown, had a tent sewn that would cover a circus ring and provide shelter for a few hundred customers. With tents as shelters, circuses began traveling on horse-drawn wagons and later moved by riverboat and rail.
The first circus to show in Wisconsin was Samuel Nichols’s tented circus, which appeared in Racine on August 11, 1843. At least one circus visited Wisconsin each year thereafter, playing in Milwaukee, Kenosha, Racine, Beloit, Janesville, and Watertown. These cities had major population concentrations at the time, as did the lead-mining region of southwestern Wisconsin, where by 1850 circuses had also visited Dodgeville, Mineral Point, Platteville, and Hazel Green.
In 1847 circus owners Edmund and Jeremiah Mabie, originally from New York State, arrived in Delavan in southeastern Wisconsin. Edmund Mabie bought four hundred acres on Delavan Lake with pastureland for horses, plentiful water, and a location that allowed him to take his Grand Olympic Arena and United States Circus to midwestern states before his East Coast competitors. Several circuses eventually followed suit and settled in Wisconsin for the same reasons.
Delavan was a growing city in the heart of what had become the nation’s new frontier. This little city, still with fewer than one thousand inhabitants, was a trading center for settlers who were moving in and clearing the rich southern Wisconsin land. Delavan already boasted blacksmiths, wagon makers, a general store, and a grain mill.
In 1847 circus owners Edmund and Jeremiah Mabie arrived in Delavan and bought property near Delavan Lake. Several other circuses soon followed the Mabies to Delavan, which became a major circus center. WHS MAP H GX9028 W24 1857 R
The Mabies attracted circus performers and workers to Delavan, eventually forming a substantial circus colony there. In 1847 Matthew Buckley, a performer with the Mabie Circus, became one of the first circus performers to move to Delavan. In 1856 Buckley’s son, Harry, a skilled rider, organized the first circus to originate in Wisconsin—twenty-eight years before the Ringlings put their show on the road. Between 1847 and 1894, some twenty-six circuses had winter quarters in Delavan.
A Ringling Brothers circus herald for 1884, their first year. It was the only year that the Ringlings allowed someone else’s name to precede theirs in the billing. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
P. T. Barnum, founder of the American Museum in Manhattan in 1841, entered the circus business in late 1870 with partners William C. Coup (from Delavan) and Dan Castello (a longtime circus man from Racine, Wisconsin). This was the beginning of the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus, with headquarters in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
The Ringling Brothers organized their first overland circus in 1884—by which time circuses had been in the United States for nearly one hundred years and were well established in Wisconsin and the rest of the Midwest. In some ways the Ringlings were late in coming to the circus business, and they may well have benefited by not being pioneers in the business. By the time their circus began touring, the circus world was a rich environment for growth and success. This likely was one reason they were able to flourish and eventually become the largest circus in the world.
The story of the Ringling Brothers’ Circus is the story of seven brothers. They began in the most modest of circumstances and, through perseverance, hard work, careful attention to detail, tremendous business savvy, and some luck, created the greatest circus in the world. The Ringling Brothers became very wealthy men, one fifty-cent ticket at a time.2
The circus train’s first section, the Flying Squadron, arrives in the still dark hour before sunup. The engineer carefully eases the circus cars onto a sidetrack for unloading while many town residents stand nearby, having risen early from their beds to witness the remarkable events.
For six days of the week during the show season, the circus staff unloaded the train each morning, held two performances, and then loaded the train again to travel through the night to the next town on the route. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
The circus’s advance agent, called a twenty-four-hour man, had arrived the previous day to make sure everything was in order at both at the rail yard and the show site. He checked the streets the circus wagons would travel and called on local businesses that had contracts for feed and other supplies to remind them of their commitments. Now he meets the Flying Squadron and shows the early arrivals the way to the show lot.
At the train site, workmen begin unloading the horses, which wore their harnesses on the train. Other men immediately begin unloading circus wagons from the railcars using two long gangplanks made of wood and iron that are attached to the end of the last flatcar. Two men called polers grab a wagon tongue and guide the wagon as a team of horses on a long rope slowly pull it forward. Other men place flat pieces of steel called crossover plates between the flatcars that allow the horses to pull each wagon from one flatcar to the next until it reaches the runway at the end.
Before running the wagon down the ramp, workers attach a rope with a metal hook and wind it around an iron bar fastened to the railroad car. The burly men hold the rope with all their might, preventing the wagon from running down the ramp too fast. Just before the wagon reaches the bottom of the ramp, the men ease off on the rope, leaving the wagon enough momentum to roll out of the way so the next wagon can be unloaded.
Percheron horses in teams of four, six, and eight are quickly hitched to the wagons and begin pulling them to the show lot, some distance from the rail yard. Quickly, efficiently, the workers finish unloading the first section of the train just as the second section arrives; the engineer switches the train into position, and workers continue the unloading. Horses, wagons, and men are everywhere. Lions roar; elephants trumpet. Exotic sights and sounds saturate the early morning air. Already the circus is astounding to observers, especially these rural people who have never seen anything like it. The smells of dust, horse sweat, and manure hang in the air as the teams lean into their harnesses and pull the heavy wagons toward the circus grounds.
The boss canvas-man—the man in charge of erecting tents—arrives at the show grounds ahead of the others and begins spotting the location for each of the eighteen or so tents that make up the circus. He carries with him a sketch of what should go where, a part of the contract the circus had negotiated with the host city. If the lot contains trees, low spots, rocks, or other features that might cause problems, he relocates tents and driveways accordingly. He instructs employees to set the hundreds of small, two- to three-foot-long iron pins that will define where each tent is to be placed.
Canvasmen locate the Big Top’s center poles, mark the spots with metal stakes with small white ribbons attached, and string tape lines from the center poles, measuring the outside reach of the tent. Then they place pins marked with red ribbons to show where the main guy ropes are to go and pins with blue ribbons to indicate the position for each stake.
The Big Top and other large tents, called round tops, can be made even larger by lacing in middle pieces between the two giant half-circles. At its largest, the Big Top tent, where the major performances are held, is 440 feet long and about 190 feet wide and seats more than ten thousand people, with ample room for three rings and a hippodrome racetrack.
The trip from the rail yard to the show lot was sometimes more than a mile. Here an eight-horse team is pulling the extremely heavy center-pole wagon. PHOTO BY H. W. PELTON; PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
While the boss canvasman continues laying out the show lot, other men hurriedly assemble the cooking department, including the kitchen, refrigerator, water wagons (which had been filled the previous night), and cook and dining tents. Workers quickly erect the cook tent and start fires in the kitchen stoves. Steaks and chops, prepared the night before, and potatoes and eggs are soon sizzling. Other workers draw water from the water wagon and pour it into giant black kettles that sit above crackling open fires outside the cook tent. In minutes coffee is boiling. The cook staff erect the dining tents, spread tablecloths, and place dishes in position. Usually by six a.m., waiters dressed in white will be ready to serve breakfast to the hungry crew.
Black kettles steam over a campfire; in minutes coffee will be ready for the circus staff. RICHARD E. AND ALBERT CONOVER COLLECTION, CWM
Waiters dressed in formal white attire await hundreds of hungry circus workers. The tables and seats came apart, making them highly portable. RICHARD E. AND ALBERT CONOVER COLLECTION, CWM
The pole wagons and horse tent wagons arrive. Men unload the huge center poles near where they will be raised, while others erect the horse tents and canvas mangers. Seven horse tents go up, each forty by eighty-four feet. As soon as the horses are cooled from their early morning work, they are fed and watered.
Pounding the tent stakes was a difficult job, requiring both strength and timing. As seen in this 1902 image, several men took turns hitting the same stake. RICHARD E. AND ALBERT CONOVER COLLECTION, CWM
Six-man crews of stake drivers take their positions around four-foot-long, two- to three-inch-thick wooden stakes that will hold the great tents in place. One by one the muscular men strike the stake with a huge seventeen-pound sledgehammer. These human stake drivers are rhythm in motion, filling the air with an even “bang, bang, bang.” When one stake is in place, the crew moves on to the next. In about forty-five minutes some thirty stake drivers pound in as many as one thousand stakes.1
Putting up the Big Top center poles, using both man- and horsepower. The center poles were as long as fifty feet. PHOTO BY STEVE ALBASING; ALBASING COLLECTION, CWM
Next, twenty to thirty men, with the help of many horses, raise the center poles for the Big Top tent. While the center poles are going up, other workers spread the canvas on the ground and lace together the center pieces. Then they raise the side poles, shove them into the pockets at the eaves, attach the sidewall canvas, and loosely tie ropes from each side pole to the stakes.
Men gather at the middle of the tent and, with ropes and pulleys, begin raising the tent up the center poles. They tie ropes to the metal bale rings attached to the canvas and slide the rings up the poles. After they have raised the tent a few feet, they hitch a team of horses to the ropes and quickly pull the tent to its full height. Finally, workers lift the quarter poles into place and tighten the guy ropes.
With the Big Top in position, the workers move on to the three show rings, the bleacher seats, the rigging for the aerial acts, and hundreds of other details, readying the big tent for its thousands of visitors. Tents for the menagerie, dressing room, sideshow, wardrobe, harness and repair, blacksmith shop, and barber are soon in place. Throughout the morning local dray wagons of various sizes and shapes arrive to deliver vegetables, groceries, meats, ice, water, milk, hay, and grain.
With the Big Top up, workers file into the dining tents with appetites sharpened by several hours of hard work. When they are finished eating, the performers and workmen begin to prepare for the circus parade that will wind its way along the town streets later in the morning to attract audiences for the day’s two Big Top shows, at 2:00 and 8:00 p.m.
Workers lace together the canvas pieces in preparation for raising the Big Top. RICHARD E. ALBERT CONOVER COLLECTION, CWM
Spreading the Big Top canvas was a difficult task requiring a large team of workers. The canvas crew was the largest of all the circus crews. RICHARD E. AND ALBERT CONOVER COLLECTION, CWM
Before the tent shows, visitors take in an hour-long band concert in the Big Top or tour the circus menagerie, all part of the fifty-cent admission price. With a blast from the ringmaster’s whistle, the first Big Top show starts promptly at 2:00 p.m. The ringmaster welcomes children of all ages and introduces the first event—a colorful parade of animals and performers, a hint of the spectacle to come. For two hours awestruck visitors behold high-wire aerialists swinging from the high wires; jugglers, bareback riders, horses, elephants performing; and of course, clowns by the dozens, all accompanied by a live orchestra. When the afternoon show is completed, workers and performers have a few short hours to rest and eat their evening meal before the evening crowds arrive and another show begins promptly at 8:00 p.m.
Even before the evening Big Top performance starts, workers are dismantling the horse tents and smaller tents and are loading the circus train for its journey to the next stop. They lower the sideshow tent about 8:00 p.m. and close the menagerie and move the animals to the train promptly at 9:00 p.m. By the end of the performance all that remain standing are the Big Top and the dressing room tent. Audience members who bought tickets for the after-show program move to their reserved seats, where they hear musical selections and perhaps see a juggler perform or enjoy some acrobatic acts. The staff remove the bleacher seats and get into position to take down the Big Top when the show ends.
The boss canvasman blows his whistle. Despite the long day of toil, the workers quickly and adeptly take down the sidewalls and roll the canvas into huge bundles. They lower the gaslights and loosen the ropes that held the canvas to the center pole. The big tent slowly eases to the ground, like a giant animal preparing for sleep.
The Big Top is up, the three rings are in place, and the seats await the next crowd of eager circus customers. PRINT COLLECTION, CWM
The men unlace the tent pieces, roll the huge sections of canvas into bundles called bales, and load them into wagons. They lower the center poles and yank the hundreds of stakes out of the ground with a stake puller, a device that includes an axle and two low wheels with a tongue and a chain. The chain is wrapped around a stake, several men push down on the tongue, and the stake practically jumps out of the ground. Soon the last stake is loaded and the remaining wagons lumber off to the rail yard to catch the last section of the train. Two other train sections have already left about a half-hour apart.
The next day, and the day after that, and every day except Sunday from April to November, these traveling circus workers will repeat this same fascinating routine.
NOTES
1. Fred Dahlinger Jr., “The Circus Stake Driver: The Best, Simplest, and Most Economical Machine Ever Invented,” Bandwagon, January–February 1999, p. 6.