When I started this project I knew almost nothing about the circus or the Ringlings. As a kid, I had never attended a circus, had never been in a Big Top tent, and had never seen a circus menagerie or a sideshow display. I had heard about the Ringling Brothers, of course, but I didn’t even know how many brothers there were.
A few years ago, when I was working on a presentation about barns, I contacted Circus World Museum about photographing some of the old winter quarters barns that I knew were there. I drove up to Baraboo and met curator Fred Dahlinger, who showed me through the buildings. As we crawled up ladders and looked into dusty corners, Fred began sharing his vast knowledge of these structures that the Ringlings had built to house everything from elephants, horses, and giraffes to pythons, panthers, and zebras.
“Any interest in writing about what’s here?” Fred asked when I returned a second time for more information. I answered no, that I was immersed in another book project. But his invitation intrigued me, and a couple of months later I was back in Baraboo, and Fred was showing me the vast collection of materials in Circus World’s Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center. Soon I was making weekly visits to the library, reading old newspapers, paging through route books (the day-to-day records of each season’s shows), glancing at account ledgers, looking at circus posters, examining circus records, and before long becoming thoroughly confused and overwhelmed. But I was more than a little intrigued with what I was learning and felt compelled to continue the research. It also became evident that I was facing a book-length project.
One summer day, Fred called and said that a couple of circus historians were coming to Baraboo. Would I like to have lunch with them? The four of us gathered at a little coffee shop in downtown Baraboo and talked circus—I should say, I listened and asked questions while Fred, Richard Reynolds III, and Fred Pfening III, talked. Before we finished coffee, both men had agreed to help me with the project. Some months later, I had lunch with Stuart Thayer, circus historian and author of several circus histories, and I learned even more. Thayer, an expert on pre–Civil War circus history, helped me begin to put the Ringling story into a broader historical perspective.
I read The Circus Kings (1960) by Henry Ringling North and Alden Hatch for an overview of the Brothers and their circus and for some perspective on the project I was undertaking.1 But I purposely did not read other books about the Ringlings until later because I did not want anything that had been written earlier to effect the approach I might take to the work.
By this time I had decided that the book I was attempting to write had to include not only the Baraboo story but also the history of the Ringling Brothers: how they got started and how they created the largest and most prosperous circus in the world.
I spent a week in Columbus, Ohio, at Fred Pfening’s invitation. There I pored over Ringling account books, photocopied original correspondence, and became acquainted with Pfening’s vast collection of Ringling material. To have unlimited access to original letters and spend uninterrupted hours paging through business records is the kind of situation any historian hopes for. These materials had been largely unexamined, especially the financial and employee records, which provided new insights into the Ringlings’ circus operations.
After a news article about the book project appeared in the Baraboo paper, several people contacted me and offered to share stories about the Ringlings in Baraboo. Often the stories were part of oral family histories as people shared anecdotes told to them by their grandparents. I twice interviewed Chappie Fox, longtime director of Circus World Museum and a font of Ringling stories, some that have become legends. (Chappie Fox died on September 12, 2003.) Such stories put a human face on history, and for me they are essential to historical writing.
My wife and I spent several days in McGregor, Iowa, guests of Iowa historians Elmer and Carol Marting, to get the flavor of the town where the Ringling Brothers grew up and first developed their ideas for a circus. I read old Iowa newspapers, dug through the archives in the library, and interviewed locals who had Ringling stories.
By this time I had accumulated boxes of research materials—audiotapes of interviews, photocopies of newspaper articles, correspondence—and I hadn’t written a word. In the writing workshops I teach I tell my students that once they have done some research, they should listen to the material and it will tell them how it wants to be organized and presented. My six file boxes of material stood mute.
Faced with a contract deadline, I began writing without knowing where I was headed. But quickly, the words began coming, pages of words. The story was taking shape. Occasionally as I wrote, I discovered that I needed to do more research. Along the way, as happens in most historical research, I encountered contradictions. When circus records contradicted newspaper accounts, I relied on the circus records. Some stories of the Ringlings, especially those from oral histories, have likely been embellished as the years have passed. I have tried to point out which stories may not be entirely true—but I kept the stories.
After several months of writing, and even more rewriting, the Ringling story began to take shape. It is one of the most interesting, intriguing, and sometimes baffling stories I have ever encountered.