Today’s Almanac-April 13, 2010
On April 13, 1796 the first elephant arrived in America. The enterprising Captain Jacob Crowninshield arrived in New York with a two year old Indian elephant. He had invested total of $450 in the endeavor, including the original purchase price and expenses of transportation. It proved to be a wide investment. The animal went on exhibition at the corner of Broadway and Beaver St. ten days later drawing astonished crowds. A Welshman was so impressed he offered the Captain $10,000, an astonishing fortune at the time. Newspaper accounts indicated that the animal was “on tour” by summer, exhibited in Charleston, North Carolina, Baltimore, and Philadelphia that year. The curious shelled out 50¢, more than a day’s wage for most workers. The elephant grew rapidly and so did crowds. The animal was apparently never given a name and always referred to as “he” in newspaper accounts. One minister who got close enough for investigation, however, documented that the animal was a female. She did no tricks and there was apparently no other show except perhaps for some patter by the exhibitor. Yet all American circus traces back to this exhibition, which toured the Eastern Seaboard states continually until its last reported appearance in York, Pennsylvania in July of 1818. What happened to her is unclear. By that time she had some competition Hachaliah Bailey was touring with his elephant, Old Bet starting in 1804. She was killed by boys in Maine in 1816 by a mob protesting her exhibition on the Sabbath. Undeterred, Bailey toured her stuffed remains through New England through 1821. Bailey replaced her with Little Bet in 1817. Little Bet was the first Learned Elephant who could perform tricks, transforming the exhibition into a real show. She was killed in Chepachet, Rhode Island by boys testing Bailey’s claim that her hide was so thick that “bullets bounce right off.” Columbus, Bailey’s third pachyderm had better luck. He built a three story “Elephant Hotel” for him in Somers, New York, now a National Historic Site commemorating the early days of American circus. Columbus toured under Bailey’s management or leased to Nathan Howes until 1847. By 1824 Bailey began to add other animals to create a traveling menagerie. Both he and Howes are credited with establishing early circuses and Bailey’s show eventually was bought by P.T. Barnum and became the Barnum and Bailey Circus.