Benjamin
F. Brown and the Circus in America
Benjamin
F. Brown and the Circus in America
This exhibit is running
until January 6th, 2003 in the main room of the William L. Clements Library,
Monday through Friday, 1:00 pm to 4:45 pm.
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Steb June vented often to Brown about his distrust and dislike of George Gliddon, U.S. consul in Cairo, who was helping with the giraffe undertaking. In addition to being a diplomat, Gliddon was an Egyptologist and had access to ancient tombs in this period before the regulation of antiquities began in 1858. According to Brown's grandson, Gliddon gave Brown these artifacts which Brown brought back from Egypt. |
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May 1, 1840 letter from Stebbins June to Benjamin Brown, from the Benjamin F. Brown Collection. This mummy figure, called an ushabti, was an object to place in a tomb so that the figure could do work for the deceased in the afterlife and dates from c. 600 BCE.From the Benjamin F. Brown Collection. Canopic jar stopper. This lid for a jar containing embalmed organs may date from c. 600 BCE. From the Benjamin F. Brown Collection. Ostrich egg acquired by Brown on his trip through Egypt. From the Benjamin F. Brown Collection. Brown's clay pipe from Egypt. From the Benjamin F. Brown Collection. Bronze figure of the Egyptian god Harpocrates. Possibly c. 600 BCE to the early centuries of the Common Era. From the Benjamin F. Brown Collection. |
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The American Museum, drawn by I.B. Forrest and engraved by W. Wellstood, from New-York: Past, Present and Future by Ezekiel Belden, published in New York in 1850. Letter from P.T. Barnum, from the Benjamin F. Brown Collection. 1843 letter from George Finch of Somers in which Finch describes seeing Tom Thumb. From the Ephemera Collection.Jumbo's March, from the Sheet Music Collection, circa late nineteenth century. Carte de visite of P.T. Barnum, date and photographer unknown. Carte de visite of Charles and Lavinia Stratton, a.k.a. General and Mrs. Tom Thumb, date and photographer unknown. The Catalogue of show property to be sold by P.T. Barnum universal exposition, c. 1880, reveals that while the scale of circuses may have grown over the course of the nineteenth century, many elements were familiar. Admission token to Barnum's American Museum, New York. |
At about the time that Brown was nearing the end of his career in the circus, P.T. Barnum (1810-1891) was beginning his circus career. After a few years in the exhibition business, Barnum bought the American Museum, a exhibition hall for curiosities in New York, in1841, using the names of June, Titus and Angevine, among others, as references to the seller of the Museum. In his autobiography Barnum explained his efforts to expand and improve the attractions of the Museum; an 1843 letter in the Brown Collection from the soon-to-be famous showman reveals his efforts in that regard. In 1842, Barnum met and signed the tiny five-year-old Charles Stratton whom Barnum exhibited in the United States and Europe as General Tom Thumb. In the early 1850s, Barnum toured his exhibits with a menagerie for a few years as "Barnum's great Asiatic Caravan, Museum and Menagerie" but then did not put on circuses again until the 1870s.
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