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Adrienne Saint-Pierre, Barnum Museum curator, explained that 'Barnum’s genius was he understood that people are attracted to the bizarre as much as the beautiful'.
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His circus was a Big Top filled with extremes – from an elephant called Jumbo to the tiny talent nicknamed Tom Thumb.
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Stratton offered to travel as General Tom Thumb again to make enough money to get Barnum back on his feet.īarnum’s next act would be The Greatest Show on Earth. Instead, he unknowingly bought the company and its staggering debt, putting him in financial ruin. He had purchased a clock company with the intention of bringing it to the city where his investment was supposed to create jobs and housing. Once flush with money from his management of Tom Thumb, Barnum was poor. In fact, within 14 years of his first European tour with Barnum, Stratton, then a three-foot-tall man, would come to the businessman’s rescue when by 1855 he moved to Stratton’s hometown of Bridgeport in addition to making a poor financial decision. Stratton enjoyed the stage and although critics questioned whether Barnum was exploiting him, he proved himself to be entirely in control of his career. Stratton could have easily retired as a child, he had earned a considerable amount of money through his partnership with Barnum, but he kept his thumb in the showbiz pie and went on touring solo for many years. Here 12 year old Stratton poses with Barnum in this photo from 1850 It was in Bridgeport where through a twist of fate PT Barnum (left) discovered Charles ‘Tom Thumb’ Stratton (right), the 'extraordinary little boy' who at just 25 inches tall would become Barnum's star attraction. The duo traveled the world in the 1840s and Stratton, known as 'General Tom Thumb', was watched by an estimated 50million people worldwide and counted Queen Victoria and Abraham Lincoln among his fans. Their friendship will be immortalized and given the huckster treatment on the silver screen in a forthcoming flick: The Greatest Showman. Stratton would end up being the star attraction in Barnum’s sideshow and elevate his fame to international levels. It was in Bridgeport where through a twist of fate Barnum discovered Charles Stratton, the 25 inch tall four-year-old 'extraordinary little boy' he'd heard people in the town talk about. In Bridgeport, he wanted to take what he had learned to build the city in a way that would equally amaze visitors. He had capitalized on people’s fascination with ‘freaks’. Bridgeport was but a whisper of the booming Connecticut city it had once been when the famous showman Phineas Taylor Barnum came to town.īarnum’s decision to buy land there could have proven to be a bad investment, but he managed to dust off the ashes of post-industrial decay and revived its magic.īarnum had spent most of his adult life exploring and exploiting oddities with his New York City museum. Kimball also did one of the rebuildings of the great Mormon Tabernacle organ in S.
KIMBALL ORGAN FASCINATION THE ENTERTAINER PORTABLE
He developed portable pipe organs that used three ranks of free reeds to replace the longer pedal pipes. William Wallace Kimball founded the Kimball Organ Company in Chicago in 1857, manufacturing reed and pipe organs.
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