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In 1900 Alf T. Ringling published a book entitled Life Story of the Ringling Brothers. One of the incidents he related in this volume concerned the first time the brothers “talked youthful ambition among themselves.” This he marks as the genesis of their deciding to have a circus. The stimulus for this was the arrival of a show in McGregor, Iowa, where the family then lived. Apparently, Alt T. had forgotten the title of the circus, or he felt it was of no importance for he didn’t name it in the book. “Not a great tented circus,” he wrote, “for this was in the 60’s.” It was on a steamboat which announced its approach by “glaring rosin torches and a river calliope.”
Unfortunately for the brothers there was no money available to them for tickets, but as luck would have it, one of the performers visited their father’s harness shop. He needed some repair to be done to the leather belt and pouch he used as the understander in the perch act. This performer was known to the Ringlings for he was a resident of McGregor, “popular with his townsfolk and a demigod in the eyes of the village boys,” as Alf T. described him. Again, he didn’t bother to name the man. Father Ringling repaired the equipment and because the performer was a local, refused payment for the work. The circus man thereupon presented a family ticket to the harness-maker.
“It was an old-fashioned one ring show . . . to the Ringling youngsters it stood out then and stands out today as the greatest show, the brightest and most delightful that ever was given.”
To a researcher, the immediate questions that arise on reading this are: What was the date of the stand? Which circus was it? Who was the perch performer? An investigation into the answers produced an astonishing list of commentators on the event. It also provided a disheartening look at the way the use of secondary sources and incompetent research can twist the truth and deflect the path of historical accuracy.
THE DATE
To determine the year in which the Ringling boys saw the circus we have to first decide when they lived in McGregor. All that Alf T. said is that it was in “the 60s.” J. J. Schlicher did the major work on the family, which he published in the Wisconsin Magazine of History in 1942. He determined that the first documentation of the family in McGregor was an advertisement for the father’s harness shop in the North Iowa Times on December 10, 1862. The last advertisement for the shop was on April 5, 1871. A complete list of businesses in McGregor was printed by the Times on January 3, 1872, and Ringling’s name was not included. Therefore, the family was in McGregor between December 1862 and April 1871.
The five oldest brothers were present when the steamboat brought the circus. He said John Ringling was four years old at the time. John was born in May 1866, so by this reckoning the boat must have touched the wharf in 1870, though possibly very early in 1871. Yet the book reads “the 60’s.” Obviously, there is confusion here. We have to ascribe it to poor memory, lacking any other explanation. Alf was writing thirty years after the event. The things that stood out for him were the things he mentioned: a circus on a steamboat with a calliope carrying a one-ring tented circus with a perch performer who lived in McGregor.
Earl Chapin May in a newspaper article in 1931 stated that the incident occurred in the summer of 1870. He had done his arithmetic just as we did. He had finished his book, The Circus from Rome to Ringling, by that time (it was published in 1932) and in it referred to conversations he had with the brothers. It’s entirely possible that one of them told him that the year was 1870. However, sometime between his 1931 article in the Baltimore Sun (August 16) and The Circus from Rome to Ringling he decided it was not “a minor tented show” but Dan Rice’s Paris Pavilion Circus. May’s From Rome to Ringling became, and unfortunately still is, the standard circus history simply because it is available in most libraries. Not an historian, and barely a researcher, May published as great a compendium of error as any commentator ever has. Because of this the 1870 date occurs over and over in the retelling of the tale. Since May was the first and best-known scribe to use the 1870 date, it is our assumption that later commentators took it from his book. Among these persons we would list Edwin C. Hill (1932), Dexter Fellows (1936), Henry Ringling North (1960), Ruth Beitz (1961) and Sverre Braathen (1970). None of these people were historians, either, and none of them, obviously, went to the trouble of doing their own research. North has a disclaimer in his The Circus Kings in which he writes, “Like most legends, this one is probably contrary to fact but contains the essence of truth.” Since he says that his uncles told him it was Dan Rice’s circus, it could well be that they had come to believe it themselves.
Two books, Alvin F. Harlow’s The Ringlings, Wizards of the Circus (1951), and John and Alice Durant’s Pictorial History of the American Circus (1957) used the date 1869, perhaps because Alf T. said “in the 60’s.” As it turns out, 1869 is the correct year, as we will illustrate by identifying the circus and the performer.
THE CIRCUS
As to what show it was, Alf T.’s “not a great tented circus,” is of no help as few great tented circuses plied the Mississippi. The limitations forced on showmen when they traveled the river made it difficult to carry parade wagons, for instance. Some carried just a bandwagon, others a mounted band. When larger shows made river runs they sometimes towed barges for extra material; we haven’t found this method used before the Civil War. The earliest example of good-sized menageries, including elephants, being transported on steamboats are G. F. Bailey & Co. and the Mabie Menagerie, both in 1863.
In his 1931 article May refers to the exhibition the boys saw as “a minor tented show.” Edwin C. Hill called it “a little one-horse circus” in 1932. Then, in his 1932 book May suddenly proclaims that it was Dan Rice, “making upper Mississippi towns with a cumbersome, though colorful, floating circus sold to him by the Flatfoots who had brought it back from a season in Paris.” Later in the same tome he says “Dan Rice’s long-awaited Great Paris Pavilion Circus warped up to the dock and unloaded.” The source of this bolt from the blue can not, unfortunately, be checked, as May used no footnotes, another sign of his unprofessional approach. The effect of this identification has been felt ever since, either being accepted or at least acknowledged. Karl K. Knecht in White Tops in 1933 used the phrase “Dan Rice some say.” Others, such as C. P. Fox and Dean Jensen indicated they, too, were not convinced it was Rice. However, most commentators picked up Mays’ identification without hesitancy. Among those we listed above all seem to have taken at face value May’s decision that it was Dan Rice that visited McGregor in 1870 and inspired, in part, the Ringling brothers decision to become circus men.
Unfortunately for all of them, May included, Dan Rice did not play McGregor in 1870. He played Hickman and Columbus, Kentucky, on April 25 and 26 and turned east into the Ohio River, playing Mound City, Illinois, on April 28. He remained east of the Mississippi for the balance of the season. May’s naming and describing Dan Rice’s Paris Pavilion Circus was aped by an anonymous writer in the American Weekly of November 27, 1936, by Alvin F. Harlow, and the Durants. Not one of these writers checked the most obvious source, the local newspaper. McGregor’s North Iowa Times carried the announcement of but one circus in 1870, that of George W. DeHaven.
Further, Dan Rice’s Paris Pavilion Circus was a wagon show that toured first in 1871 and even then did not play McGregor. The Paris Pavilion was a canvas-topped, wood-walled, prefabricated structure that had been built in Albany in 1867 for use at the Paris Exposition of 1868. Rice’s men apparently struggled with the thing all season. It was 118 feet in diameter and had 20 foot high sidewalls. They finally stored it in Baltimore. It was auctioned there in August 1874, and brought $2,500.
“Not a great tented circus,” in Alf T.’s book could have referred to DeHaven’s Sensation Circus of 1870. Traveling aboard the steamboat Victor the show had fifteen performers. Featured were Spencer Stokes and his talented daughters. Most of the acts were second-rate. The perche act was done by the Davenport brothers who, contrary to Alf T.’s description, did not live in McGregor. Since we stated above that 1869 was the correct year we can eliminate DeHaven as a possibility and turn to the “demi-god” performer.
THE PERFORMER
We have located fourteen commentaries on the subject. They date from 1931 to 1993. The earliest one to identify Andrew Gaffney as the performer who needed the leather repair is Alvin Harlow in his 1951 book. Since Alf T. didn’t identify Gaffney, then neither did Earl Chapin May. From this we can assume that everyone who wrote before 1951 was following May, or didn’t think the performer’s name was important.
Andrew Gaffney was born in Canada, according to the Iowa census of 1860. His obituary in the 27 August 1892 New York Clipper says he died at seventy, which would indicate a birth date in 1822. Family tradition has him born in 1834. He was quoted once as saying he joined the Van Amburgh show (Raymond & Co. and Van Amburgh & Co. Menageries United) in 1852. If this was his first employment we would favor the 1834 birth date, as few performers waited until they were thirty to begin their circus careers. He was a cannonball performer; that is, he juggled twenty-five to fifty pound cannonballs, threw them in the air and caught them on his neck and shoulders. He also was the understander in a perch-pole act, a common duty for a circus strongman. A large man, Gaffney was sometimes called “The Irish Giant,” or so says his obituary. It also says he began his career with the Orton Circus in 1856. The first notice we have found of him is in 1866. This might indicate a misprint in the Clipper, yet the paper said he was in the business forty years, which goes back to the 1852 Van Amburgh menagerie. By 1860 Gaffney was living in McGregor and tending bar in the off-season. The 1870 census shows the same. He was with the Orton show through 1868, and was featured in their advertising. In our subject year, 1869, he switched to John Stowe’s Circus. This outfit became Stowe & Orton in October and proceeded on a southern tour that, once begun, went into early 1871. Gaffney was with the company for the entire run.
Alf T. says Gaffney was a “demi-god” to the Ringling boys. May uses the very same term, which tells us he had read Ringling’s book. But since Ringling didn’t name the show, journalist May felt compelled to flesh out the description. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong circus to be the one that inspired our little heroes.
The North Iowa Times carried two circus ads in 1869. One of them was for “Dan Rice’s Own Circus,” which arrived on the steamer Will S. Hayes on June 21. The other was for “John Stowe & Co.’s Great Western Circus” which arrived overland on September 7. Among the performers with John Stowe we find “Mr. Andrew Gaffney, rolling globe and flying tranca performer.” No mention made of a perch pole performance. In addition, another performer is listed as doing the cannonball act as well as being “light and heavy balancer” (read: juggler). A rolling globe act in those days, and these, is one which the performer stands on a large ball and propels it about the ring with his feet. A tranca act is one in which he lies in a cradle and juggles a wooden beam the - ”tranca” - a ball, a barrel or anything else, with his feet. If, as Alf T. states, Gaffney needed a repair to his perch harness then he must have been doing that act in the Stowe program. The discovery of these ads, which any of the purveyors of the 1870 Dan Rice identification could have made, merely points out the limits of their research. Most of them obviously read May and accepted his version. How he was able to drag in the Paris Pavilion Circus, we may never know. There is nothing in his notes at the Circus World Museum, the depository of his personal papers, to enlighten us. Yet, identifying John Stowe’s Circus as the organization which carried Andrew Gaffney to his hometown, and the one ring circus as the one the Ringling family visited on a family pass still doesn’t answer some questions raised by Alf T.’s 1900 book.
He said it was a boat show, and that it had a calliope. As far as is known, Stowe did not travel by steamer. Dan Rice did, but there is no record of there being a calliope on the Will S. Hays. Did Al Ringling confuse two, or maybe three shows from his boyhood memories? In looking for a calliope on a steamboat stopping in McGregor in these years, we find several steamboat shows, but none with a calliope. Of course, it is entirely possible that the memory of a steamboat carrying a circus could automatically trigger the idea of a steam piano being present, factual or not.
Forgiving Alf Ringling’s thirty-year error is easy; and it leaves us with Andrew Gaffney and John Stowe’s circus and 1869 as the year that was recalled in the book. There it might rest, but, unfortunately for the concept of a neat package of research, another Ringling spoke out. In an interview published in the Philadelphia Public Ledger on March 26, 1921 Charles Ringling was reported as saying: “When I was a boy out in McGregor, Iowa, where I was born, Dan Rice’s circus came up the Mississippi River. It was my first circus with its red bandwagon and spotted horses. Of course I was taken, and allowed to remain for the concert at which a young man and his sister sang Little Brown Jug, and Shouldn’t Wonder, No, By Thunder. That lad - well, bless me, here he is now.”
The reporter then said that a tall, spare, gray-haired man with twinkling eyes stepped forward and was introduced. It was Albert Miaco, dean of circus clowns. Fortunately, there are some clues in Charles Ringling’s statement. The spotted horses he mentions were a feature with John Stowe & Co. beginning in the season of 1868, thus placing the hitch in McGregor in 1869. Spotted, or piebald, or pinto, horses were still quite rare in the eastern United States at the time, descended as they were from the Indian mounts of the west, where they had been introduced by the Spanish explorers. Their rarity is seemingly documented by the fact that when circuses had them they advertised them. Dan Rice’s circus of 1869 not only had no spotted horses, it had no bandwagon. Edgar Menter’s band rode horseback through the streets of the towns in which the show appeared.
The song, Little Brown Jug, which incidentally was thought to be inappropriate for tender ears since it was a drinking song, was not published until 1869. This does not mean that Al Miaco could not have sung it in that year, but it is cutting things close. Further, Al Miaco was not with either Dan Rice or the Stowe concern in 1869. His name graced the roster of Ames’ Menagerie, and in 1870 that of H. M. Smith’s show. So much for Charlie’s contribution.
To sum up, John’s age being listed as four (he was born in May, 1866), makes it seem that the circus visited in 1870. DeHaven’s did. Both Alf T. and Charles Ringling say it was a boat show. DeHaven’s was. But the story of Gaffney presenting August Ringling with a family ticket clearly eliminates the DeHaven circus. That story can only point to Stowe’s aggregation. Charles’ description of the spotted horses points to Stowe. Yet both brothers said it was Dan Rice, and we know that Rice played McGregor in 1869. We also know he didn’t play there in 1870. Our conclusion can only be that the brothers combined their memory of Rice’s appearance with that of Stowe, and Alf T., thirty years later, and Charles, fifty years later, can surely be forgiven for this lapse of memory.
Bibliography
Alf T. Ringling, The Story of the Ringling Brothers, (Chicago, 1900).
We are indebted to Patricia Wolfe, San Jose, California for the genealogical
information on Andrew Gaffney. Mrs. Wolfe’s husband is Gaffney’s
great grandson.
J. J. Schlicher, “On the Trail of the Ringlings,” Wisconsin
Magazine of History, xxvi; 1 (1942).
Earl Chapin May, “Mr. John, King of the Circus,” Baltimore Sun, 16 August 1931 (also in New York Herald Tribune, same day); The Circus from Rome to Ringling, (New York,
1932).
Edwin C. Hill, New York Sun, 22 April 1932.
Dexter Fellows, This Way to the Big Show, (New York, 1936).
Henry Ringling North, The Circus Kings, (New York, 1960).
Ruth S. Beitz, “Big Names for the Big Top,” The Iowan Magazine. 6 August 1961.
Sverre O. and Faye O. Braathen, “Circus Monarches; the Ringling Brothers,” Bandwagon, xiv:
3 (1970).
Alvin F. Harlow, The Ringlings, Wizards of the Circus, (New York, 1951).
John and Mabel Durant, Pictorial History of the American Circus, (New York, 1957).
Karl K. Knecht, “Another Story of the Brothers Ringling,” White Tops, vi: 4, (1933).
Raymond G. Carroll, Public Ledger, (Philadelphia), 26 March 1921.
CHS webmaster J. Griffin, last modified December 2005.