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The circus that evolved into the P. T Barnum show of 1871 was Dan Castello’s Great Show & Egyptian Caravan of 1870. As has been chronicled, the company owned by Castello and W. C. Coup toured the Great Lakes on board the propeller driven Benton in that season. (1) In the Jacksonville, Oregon Democratic News of 30 July 1870 there appears an ad for Dan Castello’s Circus & Menagerie, 2,000 miles west of Wisconsin, making the case for there being two Castello companies that season.
It was not unheard of for California showmen to adopt the names of well-known eastern titles. John Wilson did this with Dan Rice’s name in 1860 and 1861, and again with Joe Pentland’s name in 1862. Neither Rice nor Pentland was in the West in those years. We don’t know if Wilson used the titles with permission or not, but if he didn’t have it, he was only jeopardizing himself morally, for the most he could expect in punishment would be a restraining order.
However, the use of Castello’s name in Oregon was perfectly legal, for it had been purchased when he sold his circus in California in 1869. It will be remembered that Dan Castello’s Great Show of 1869 was the outfit that crossed the country, the first one to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Owned by Castello, James L. Nixon and Egbert Howes, the circus rode the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha to California. Leaving Omaha on 27 May, it arrived in Truckee, California on 17 July. It then toured the Golden State until well into October. Robert Pepper found the latest date we know at 21 October in Redwood City. Shortly thereafter, the owners sold the property to parties named Leihy, Lake and Baker. (2) Of Baker, we know nothing, but Leihy & Lake’s Overland Circus and Menagerie had been on the road in California in 1868.
The trained horses of the Castello show belonged to Castello, the ring horses to the Lowanda family, and the band wagon and performing lions to Van Amburgh & Co. What the new owners got was the tent, the seats, the baggage wagons and the baggage horses, as far as can be determined.
John Wilson, the California showman, whose first year on the road was 1859, had a roofed amphitheatre constructed at the comer of Post and Sutter in San Francisco in December 1869. At some point in that off-season Wilson and Leihy, Lake & Baker joined forces. The proof of this was the announcement in the Victoria British Colonist on 6 April that, “The Bartholomew, Wilson and Castello circus companies have been consolidated in the ‘Overland Circus,’ and will come north next fall.” This proved not to be exactly true as Bartholomew toured with his own show that season. Leihy, Lake & Co. moved their stock into Wilson’s building and used it as a ring barn until they opened under canvas. There were a hundred horses, twelve ponies, a camel and a llama.
In the Don Francis list of San Francisco circuses there appears Leihy, Lake & Co.’s Overland Circus on the Jackson Street lot, between Montgomery and Kearney Streets, April 5-28,1870. Wilson wasn’t mentioned, but the performers were mostly from his 1869 roster. Only Jule Kent, the clown, was from Castello’s show of the year before. The tent was a 120-foot round with a forty-eight-foot center pole, new that year and described by the New York Clipper as the highest tent ever used. The height was necessary to accommodate the Rizarelli Brothers’ trapeze act. These gentlemen had introduced the double passing act in 1867. (3) The Rizarellis did not go on the road with the Overland, and the tent may not have gone either. The Virginia City paper described it as huge, and the Gold Hill paper said it was 115 x 150. Castello’s canvas had been a seventy- five-foot round with a forty-foot middle, thus it must have been at least a two pole tent. It’s entirely possible that if they used Castello’s tent on the tour, the Virginia City reporter would have thought it “huge.” There were twenty-four quarter poles, and the side poles were eighteenfeet high.
John Wilson was listed as manager, after the show cleared San Francisco; Leihy was the treasurer, and Omar Kingsley (once Ella Zoyara) was equestrian manager. The clowns were Kent and George Constable (who soon left to work for Bartholomew). The riders were Kingsley, Kent’s daughters, Frannie and Frankie, Mlle. Victorine, and one J. Williams. Mohammed’s troupe of Bedouin Arab acrobats (five Moroccan teenagers) was led by Mohammed, a strong man. A very talented apprentice from Peru, Master Gonzalez, was listed as an acrobat. However, the “star” turn of the show was the performance of a den of lions by Mons. Lambert. These came from the 1869 Wilson show. There was a concert company and a sideshow. Anna Swan, the giantess, was the best known feature in the sideshow.
The Overland Circus left San Francisco near to May 1. By the end of the month it had reached Sonora. Here it advertised itself as The Great Overland Circus and Menagerie from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This was obviously a reference to Castello’s 1869 trek. Also, it was in Sonora that we first find mention of their bandwagon. They called it “Neptune’s Triton-borne Sea Chariot,” and said it had been made by Kimball & Co. of San Francisco. It was twenty-feet long and five-feet wide and had carved and gilded dragons on the front, and lion heads on the sides. It was drawn by an eight horse hitch. The claim was made that it cost $4,800.
The taking of the national census of 1870 caught up with the circus in Gold Hill on 15 June, and from it we get more particulars of the troupe. There were twenty-two people, two of them females. These would be the Kent sisters; Mlle. Virginie had obviously left. The median age of the company was twenty-four years. There were five members fifteen or younger. Only five of the troupe had been born in the United States. Seven were from Australia (Wilson had toured there in 1866-68). Six were Moroccan and three were Canadian. None of the managers were in Gold Hill. (4)
They reached Virginia City, Nevada, July 2 for a three day stand. Silver City was played on July 7. The company seems to have split at this time. Wilson was back on the coast by July 27, as he performed that day and the two following in Oakland. Lake took the Castello show north to Oregon.
Michael Sporrer found the advertisement we spoke of in the Jacksonville, Oregon Democratic News of 30 July. This said that the company would appear in Ashland, August 8; Jacksonville, August 9; and Rock Point, August 10. They gave as the title “Dan Castillo’s (sic) Circus & Menagerie, a combination of the Overland and Great World,” Jule Kent was still with it, as was Mohammed’s troupe of Arabs and the den of performing lions. Two parade wagons were mentioned, the Neptune Chariot and the Allegorical Car, the latter of which appeared on the street with a lion atop it. Sixty horses and sixty people were claimed, obviously a falsehood.
The route led north through Cottage Grove into Eugene and the Williamette Valley. Stands were made at Harrisburg, Monroe and Corvallis. At Albany, an August 22 date, the newspaper identified I. P. Lake as one of the proprietors. They proceeded through Brownsville, Lebanon, Scio and Silverton. In the Salem Weekly Statesman there was information that Lake and Goddard were the proprietors, and that Lake, a Portland horse dealer, had gone to California with a drove of horses, and returned with a circus. By this time Wilson, Leihy and Baker were obviously out of the concern, and in one more week Lake wished he was, as well.
The circus had advertised as far ahead as Walla Walla, Washington, far up the Columbia River basin, and projected showing in Puget Sound and Victoria and Westminster, British Columbia. The sheriff in Portland put an end to these plans by seizing the assets. The Weekly Intelligencer in Seattle reported that the seizure was done “at the insistence of some unfeeling fellow who objected to being bilked.” Thus, Dan Castello’s Great Overland Circus of 1870 ceased to exist.
Footnotes
1. Stuart Thayer, “Prelude to Barnum, the Coup and Castello Circus of
1870,” Bandwagon, July/August, 1976.
2. John D. Draper, “The History of the Howes and the London Titles,”
Bandwagon, January/February, 1978. Draper identifies the purchasers
as Lee, High & Baker; but the correct names are as we have given
them.
3. Steve Gossard, A Reckless Era of Aerial Performance the Evolution of
Trapeze, (Bloomington, IL 1994) p. 51.
4. Sherman L. Ricards and George M. Blackburn, “A Nineteenth Century
Western Circus,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, xxii: 3 (1979).
CHS webmaster J. Griffin, last modified December 2005.