Cradle of the American Circus: Poems from Somers, New York
By Jo Pitkin
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About this ebook
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Jo Pitkin
Jo Pitkin grew up in Somers, New York. She received a BA in creative writing and literature from Kirkland College, Clinton, New York, and an MFA in poetry from the Writers� Workshop at the University of Iowa. She is the author of The Measure (Finishing Line Press) and the forthcoming Commonplace Invasions collection (Salmon Poetry). Her award-winning poems have appeared in such journals and anthologies as Little Star, Ironwood, Quarterly West, BigCityLit, Nimrod International Journal, Vanguard Voices of the Hudson Valley, Connecticut River Review, Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers, Stone Canoe: A Journal of Arts and Ideas from Upstate New York and others. After working as an editor at Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston, Jo pursued a career as a freelance writer for educational publishers throughout the United States and is the credited author of more than forty books for kindergarten through twelfth-grade students. She currently lives in the Hudson River Valley in a former public schoolhouse built in 1830
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Book preview
Cradle of the American Circus - Jo Pitkin
Published by The History Press
Charleston, SC 29403
www.historypress.net
Copyright © 2012 by Jo Pitkin
All rights reserved
All images in this book are from the collection and used with permission of the Somers Historical Society unless noted otherwise.
The excerpted essays in this book are used with permission from the Somers Historical Society.
First published 2012
e-book edition 2013
Manufactured in the United States
ISBN 978.1.62584.081.3
Library of Congress CIP data applied for.
print edition ISBN 978.1.60949.637.1
Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For Florence Mickey
Oliver
and the people of Somers
Friday I tasted life. It was a vast morsel. A circus
passed the house—I still feel the red in my mind…
—Emily Dickinson,
from a letter written to Mrs. J. G. Holland in 1866
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Cradle of the American Circus, by Florence Mickey
Oliver
Prologue
Cradle of the American Circus
Hachaliah Bailey
Nero, the Royal Tiger
Old Bet
Elephant Hotel
Gerard Crane
Stone House
Roxanna Crane
Rhinoceros Creek
Thaddeus Crane
Farmers & Drovers
The Menagerie
Rara Avis
Benjamin Brown
The Camelopard
Safari
Elegy
Elephant Triptych
Wintering
37 The Bowery
The Witness
Le Cirque
Circus Poster
J. Purdy Brown
The Zoological Institute
The Flatfoots
The Great Showman’s Ball
Equestrienne
Charles Wright
The Zebra
Lewis Brown Lent
George F. Bailey
The Hippopotamus
Night Walk
Route Book
In Search of History
Cradle
Epilogue
Appendix A: The Birth, by Mabel Addis
Appendix B: The Circus from Menagerie to Mud Show, by Dr. John S. Still
Selected Bibliography
About the Contributors
About the Author
Preface
It all started with Samuel Whittemore. Nearly every day, I passed a stone monument in Arlington, Massachusetts, bearing this inscription:
Near this spot
Samuel Whittemore,
then 80 years old,
killed three British soldiers
April 19, 1775.
He was shot, bayoneted,
beaten and left for dead,
but recovered and lived
to be 98 years of age.
After growing up in Somers, New York, I lived for decades just outside Boston, where history, especially Revolutionary War history, was palpable. I read historical plaques sprinkled on houses and streets, took note of statues in town greens and strolled through seventeenth- and eighteenth-century cemeteries on Copp’s Hill or near King’s Chapel. Every Patriot’s Day in April, my adopted community celebrated local colonial heroes like Samuel Whittemore, who sought to break from oppressive British rule. During my daily travels doing ordinary things, I was constantly reminded of who had once lived in this place and what events had taken place here.
According to Mark Twain, Distance lends enchantment to the view.
In my case, this was true. Those numerous Bay State historical signs and monuments spurred me to consider my own hometown’s history. Being in a place steeped in history made me curious about where I was from, my own local legacy. What did I really know about Somers?
I knew, of course, that an elephant loomed large in Somers history. My childhood was threaded with tales about Old Bet, the town’s resident pachyderm. A third-grade teacher, Mary Egan, made sure all elementary school students knew the story of Old Bet and her owner, Hachaliah Bailey. A Somers native, Mrs. Egan famously collected elephants made out of glass, ceramic, wood and other materials. In 1966, my sister Barbara and I took part in a stirring Stamp Day
parade, with papier-mâché and live elephants, for the purpose of celebrating Somers’s official designation as Cradle of the American Circus.
At school, I cheered for the Tuskers—not the Cougars, the Lions or another sports team with a normal
name. An elephant was emblazoned on our shiny fire trucks and one police car. Most importantly, a statue of an elephant held and still holds a watchful vigil in front of the town hall, which is called, well, the Elephant Hotel. Growing up in Somers, the significance of the elephant to our community was unavoidable. But was there more to the story?
In the 1990s, I decided to write a sequence of poems about my hometown’s unusual history. I began researching the traveling menagerie and some of the Somers figures I had heard about through local lore. As my project took shape, I used whatever resources I could at the time to delve a bit deeper. What I uncovered was that other ordinary farmers and drovers besides Hachaliah Bailey had created, shaped and molded the traveling menagerie business in the early nineteenth century. I was amazed. I had no idea that—along with several different elephants besides Old Bet—lions, leopards, monkeys, hippos, giraffes, rhinos, ostriches, zebras, camels and other exotic animals had also lived, worked and died in Somers in the 1800s. I began to see my town differently.
How I researched the historical background for Cradle of the American Circus is a story in itself. Because I initiated this project before the advent of the Internet, information was not accessible at the click of a mouse. Instead, I tried to find and read accounts through the local library system. When relevant texts were not available, I attempted to purchase copies. In one case, I wrote a letter (no e-mail yet!) directly to circus historian Stuart Thayer and ordered both volumes of his self-published yet definitive Annals of the American Circus. I joined the Circus Historical Society so that I could read issues of its informative magazine, Bandwagon. To soak up atmosphere, I even attended a live performance of the Big Apple Circus when it toured Boston.
Immersing myself in historical materials certainly prepared me to write. When I had gone as far as I could as an independent researcher, I realized that I needed to be physically in Somers. I arranged a number of trips home to spend time in the archives housed at the Elephant Hotel, under town historian Florence Oliver’s watchful eye. Working there during hours when the museum was closed, I had unlimited access to the exhibits, the circus library and the materials owned by the Somers Historical Society. I remember asking, "Do I have to wear