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In the brief period in which the traveling menagerie overshadowed the circus, and for a decade beyond, James Raymond was the leading animal show impresario in America. Active from 1830 to 1851, he had from one to five units on tour in each of twenty-two seasons.
The majority of his caravans, including a few circuses, were operated in what we assume were partnerships. This is under the assumption that if two men’s names were in a title they each owned a portion of the concern. Also, Raymond leased, or seemed to, whole caravans which the lessee operated under his own name. Thus we find such titles as Raymond & Ogden, Raymond & Weeks, and Raymond & Waring which we take to be partnerships between the two named persons. Then there are S. Butler & Co.; J. E. M. Hobby; D. R. Lines; Hubble, Hunt & Co. and others that we know are using Raymond’s animals, and which we assume were leases.
There are at least fifteen men known to us as being in one or the other of these arrangements. For only one of them do we have any knowledge beyond his name and the caravans he was associated with; that man is Chauncey R. Weeks of Carmel. New York.
Weeks was the son and grandson of physicians in a family that had emigrated from Cape Cod to Somers, New York, in the eighteenth century. His father, Robert Weeks (d. 1816), was the first member of the Assembly (the state legislature) from the Southern Precinct of Dutchess County, and the prime mover in the establishment of Putnam County as a separate entity. He donated the land for the site of the Putnam County courthouse.
Chauncey, the youngest of his five children, was born in Carmel on March 12, 1812. He was educated in the public schools, and became a harness maker in the shop of James Raymond in Carmel. From then on these two men’s lives were almost constantly intertwined.
Raymond was the elder by seventeen years and entered the menagerie business in 1830 at the age of thirty-five. Two years later he and his partner, Darius Ogden, were in need of someone to manage a show, and they turned to Chauncey Weeks, then twenty.
The circumstance of their need was that a menagerie, Burgess & Co., which they apparently leased, foundered in Ohio, or nearby. Joshuah Burgess, a Bostonian, had circus experience at least as far back as 1827, but got behind in his payments for all or part of the caravan and gave it up. Weeks assumed the management by August, 1832. The title was changed to Raymond, Weeks & Co. and Weeks was launched on his show business career. The fact that his name was in the title could indicate that he had invested in the firm. He must have had prior experience, perhaps with Raymond, Ogden & Co. in either 1831 or 1832. Accompanying the show was a newly-imported twenty-year old male elephant. Burgess had called him “Timour,” but Weeks changed his name to “Hannibal.” He was to become one of the best known of show elephants before his death in 1865. In addition, there were two lions, two tigers, two llamas, three camels, a cougar, a panther, a serval, an ocelot and one of the ubiquitous “Dandy Jack” monkeys that had been trained to ride a pony. A keeper, possibly Agrippa Martin, entered the lion’s den at three o’clock each afternoon. It was a medium-sized collection for the era.
We have located but two advertisements for “The American Menagerie of Wild Beasts,” the formal title of the caravan, for the 1833 season. They were both in the South, one in Macon, Georgia, in January, the other in Nashville, Tennessee, in May. In January, 1834, Weeks combined his company with J. Purdy Brown’s circus in Baton Rouge and in March in New Orleans. At the end of the New Orleans stand, April 5, the menagerie was leased to Stephen Butler, who operated it until it became part of the Zoological Institute in 1835.
Chauncey Weeks was an investor in the Zoological Institute, but does not seem to have participated in the operations of that monopoly. Two years of continual, year-round managing must have been enough for him. He became a shopkeeper, purchasing a general store in Carmel. This was not an unusual pattern. Many young men of Putnam and Westchester Counties went out with traveling shows for a few years in order to build a bankroll with which to invest in more mundane occupations.
In December 1837 Weeks married Ada Raymond (1819-1895), eldest of James Raymond’s four children. In time, this union would produce five children of their own. Eighteen-thirty-seven was the first year of the worst economic depression in America to that time. Apparently, Weeks’ store was a victim of it. In 1838 we find him as clerk on one of Daniel Drew’s steamboats on the Hudson River. It could also be that he didn’t care for store keeping. A grandson once wrote that Weeks “was always fond of a fine horse, but not of business.”
James Raymond was involved in four shows in 1839. There was a circus and menagerie built around the elephant Columbus that traveled in the west; a Raymond & Waring circus and menagerie, managed by Noel E. Waring, that went out of New Orleans and into the South and the west; a circus titled Waring & Co.; and a circus and menagerie managed by Joseph E. M. Hobby that played the southeastern states. It was to this Hobby unit that Raymond sent Chauncey Weeks as general agent. Weeks and Darius Ogden may have both had a piece of the caravan as in August the clumsy sub-title was Raymond, Ogden, Waring, Hobby and Weeks, a senseless piling on of names to be sure. In 1840 the same menagerie was on tour, but the circus was spun off as a separate entity.
James Raymond may or may not have been enthusiastic about including circuses in his traveling units. The advantage lay in the habit of many townspeople who would pay to see animals, but were morally opposed to watching a circus. Since most of the population had no scruples about attending the circus, a circus-menagerie combination catered to the entire populace. From this grew the common practice of opening the doors an hour before the performance for the viewing of the menagerie.
The economic decline didn’t effect Raymond’s operations in a noticeable fashion. He had four shows on the road in 1839, five in 1840, and three in 1841. Wages, feed costs and the price of animals all dropped precipitously in the course of the Panic of 1837. In addition, the failure of the Zoological Institute in 1837 cast a surfeit of animals on the market.
As for Weeks, his name was in the title of Waring. Raymond, Weeks & Co.’s Menagerie and Circus in 1841. It toured the far west (i.e. Illinois and Missouri) that year. His name was dropped when the company reached New Orleans in January 1842. He moved, then, to the management of D. R. Lines & Co. where he replaced Lines and changed the title to Raymond, Weeks & Co. He took the affair up through Virginia and into Philadelphia and turned it over to Darius Ogden. Herr Driesbach, the lion trainer, made his under-canvas debut with this show when Ogden took it over.
These constant title changes confuse us, as they must the reader, and we have no clue as to what precipitated them. They could reflect changes in management, degrees of investment, or whim, for all we know. The owners must have had a system, yet we have not found the key to it. One thing seems for sure; with so many changes advertising material must have been ordered in small lots.
Thus, this 1842 caravan changed from D. R. Lines & Co. in May, from Raymond, Weeks & Co. in July, and was Raymond, Ogden & Co. over the winter in Philadelphia. It emerged for the road season of 1843 as Raymond, Weeks & Co. once again. But this only held until they reached Boston in July, when it became Raymond & Co.
Weeks’ name was not in the title in 1844, nor was his name in the advertising, but in 1845 the caravan was called Ogden, Weeks & Co. Driesbach was the featured attraction through all these name changes, and, of course, it was essentially the same menagerie in all four seasons. This 1845 version was the last one that Weeks name appeared with, or anyone else’s other than Raymond or Waring through 1848, when Waring retired. Only the Banigan & Kelly show of 1847 used other then the venerable partners’ names.
However, Weeks was accorded other honors in 1847. He was elected to the Assembly, the state legislature, from Putnam County. The term was for one year and since the body met only in the first three months of the calendar year, attendance did not interfere with a showman’s traveling season.
Raymond enhanced his operations one more time before he retired. At the end of the 1849 season he bought the Van Amburgh title from John June and Lewis Titus, thus bringing under his management both Jacob Driesbach and Isaac Van Amburgh, the two leading animal trainers of the era. Filled with success, dominating his business, and wanting to devote time to the Carmel Collegiate Institute which he had founded, James Raymond retired after the 1851 season. At the time he owned two menageries, Raymond & Hcrr Driesbach and Raymond & Van Amburgh. He sold these to two of his sons-in-law, Chauncey Weeks and John J. Drake.
Drake, of whom we know little, married Mary Raymond (1825- 1876), youngest of the Raymond off-spring, in October of 1850. They lived in Rye, New York. Drake’s connection with show business went back to the 1839 June, Titus and Angevine circus, known as the Bowery Amphitheatre. In 1846 he was manager of the Welch & Mann Circus. He must have served on some other staffs; such information is in short supply in the early nineteenth century.
The new owners did not use their own names in the titles of their menageries, most unusual for the time. Obviously Raymond, Driesbach and Van Amburgh had a great deal of cachet, going back as they did through some twenty years of advertising.
The Raymond & Van Amburgh show was a western concern, based in Zanesville, Ohio. It continued as it had in both 1852 and 1853. The Driesbach unit, however, was attached to Welch’s circus. It was titled “Welch’s National Circus, Raymond & Co.’s and Driesbach & Co.’s Menageries United.” It makes sense that this was guided by Welch’s staff, since there would be no need for two sets of managers. Our guess would be a split of the profits between Welch and the Raymond interests. The only agreement we know of in a similar case called for a fifty-fifty division. Because Weeks and Drake continued to use their menageries in this way they must have proved satisfactory.
Even though Raymond had leased shows to other individuals over most of his career, this method that Weeks and Drake pioneered, wherein they put a trainer or two and the animal tenders and an elephant and some cages under another owner’s supervision has to be regarded as their contribution to circus history. Certainly, it lowered their overhead and the circus owner was able to add a menagerie at no cost to himself.
On November 1, 1852 Welch’s circus went into Philadelphia for its annual winter show at the National Theatre. The menagerie portion was then transferred to E. F. & J. Mabie for a southern tour and stayed with the Mabies for the 1853 summer trek.
Though his name was in the title Driesbach himself was on yet another circus in 1853, this being advertised as “Driesbach’s Menagerie and Rivers and Derious Circus.” Hideralgo (James Beasley) was the trainer on the Welch show.
Thus, Weeks and Drake had three menageries on tour in 1853, but had the management only of Raymond & Van Amburgh.
In the fall of 1853 the partners made an agreement with Gilbert Spalding and Charles Rogers to place the Van Amburgh menagerie on the Floating Palace, the great barge which had held a circus for a year and a half. The seats were removed and animal cages substituted for them and with Tippo Sultan, the elephant, they steamed up and down the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers. Their advertisements said that this new arrangement contrasted agreeably “with the uncouth wagons in which animals have heretofore been exhibited.” Spalding & Rogers do not seem to have had any part of the management of this floating zoo, though they probably had a man on board to check the ticket sales as the agreement was for a fifty-fifty split of the profits. In March of 1855, after eighteen months, the animals were removed from the barge and it was returned to its owners. At this time John J. Drake sold his half of Raymond & Co. (if that was the partnership’s name) to Ira W. Gregory.
The menageries that had been attached to Rivers & Derious’ Circus and to the Mabie concern were combined for 1854 and toured as the “Great Broadway Menagerie.” This was a large wagon show. It had two elephants, two giraffes, fifty men and about forty wagons. Heir Driesbach was the trainer. The partners paid P. T. Barnum twenty per-cent of the gross for the use of the two giraffes.
For the 1855 season the Van Amburgh title was enhanced by Den Stone’s circus and an Indian troupe operated by a man named Tyler. Contrary to other combinations, this one was run by Weeks and Gregory.
The Great Broadway lost its giraffes for 1855, but gained three members of the Chiarini family so the title became Chiarini & Raymond. The personnel other than the Chiarinis were American. Weeks and Gregory, then, had two shows, both operated by themselves. These circumstances, where Weeks and Drake attached their menageries to circuses belonging to other impresarios, but Weeks and Gregory going back to having companies of their own hiring, leads us to speculate that perhaps disagreements about which way was the better had led to Drake’s selling out. Admittedly, we have no proof whatever of this possibility.
Eighteen-fifty-six was Chauncey Weeks’ last year as a showman. He and Gregory put out Driesbach’s Circus and Menagerie and Van Amburgh & Co., two circus-menagerie combinations. Weeks had run again for the Assembly and had served in the session of early 1856. He was forty-four years old and decided to step down. Hyatt Frost, who had managed Van Amburgh & Co. for two seasons (1855 and 1856), bought Weeks interest and became Gregory’s partner.
Weeks was the last of the many managers and partners that James Raymond had relied upon to dominate the business for over twenty years. After selling out, Weeks invested in the People’s Line, a Hudson River steamboat company. He died in January 1887, two months short of his seventy-fifth birthday.
Carol Weeks Wister of Old Greenwich, Connecticut made this paper possible by supplying the genealogical information on her great-greatgrandfather. She also is responsible for the photographs. Some details were the result of research by Leslie Symington of Brewster, New York.
CHS webmaster J. Griffin, last modified December 2005.