Circus Man

Monday, August 25, 2014

Andy McDonald was a showman.  He made his living as an Ahnepee storekeeper for a few years but show business was his true calling.  Local newspaper advertisements list Andy, in 1870, in the Ahnepee Dramatic Club, acting in plays at the Opera House.  As the troupe manager, Andy often performed on stage as one of his favorite characters.  

Andrew McDonald had big dreams.  He left home and the Ahnepee stage and moved to Chicago.  Andy McDonald ran away to join the circus. 

One of Andrew’s earliest forays into the world of the circus was a job as traveling agent for “Yankee” Robinson’s midwest circus.  Fayette Loadwick “Yankee” Robinson’s circus had a forty horse “Golden Swan Chariot”.  Robinson rode astride a speckled horse carrying a gold-headed cane in a mile long procession.  Robinson’s circus had a camel and a small elephant that showed “great agility” and some twenty cages in its menagerie.  During the circus season, in Chicago, huge crowds would fill the circus tents on the Lake Shore at Randolf Street. 

In the 1870s, the circus was by far the most popular form of entertainment in America.  “P. T.”  Phineas Taylor Barnum and James Anthony Bailey, ringmaster, were the best known names in the circus world.  Barnum was actually a museum owner and never owned a circus of his own.  He worked with many co-owners and marketed and produced the most popular circuses. 

Barnum was persuaded by a man named Dan Costello to use Barnum’s name for Costello’s circus.  Costello (or Castello) had earned a reputation as a dancing clown and was at one time a partner of Yankee Robinson.  Barnum and Costello formed a traveling combination show that was part museum, part animal exhibition, and part human oddities show (later known as the sideshow).  Andy McDonald became assistant manager of Barnum and Costello’s Great Combination Show.   

In 1871, the “Green Bay Advocate” newspaper mentioned that Andrew McDonald had been hired to travel in advance of Barnum’s Great Show.  He was to make arrangements for its advertising and movement.

     

As the advance man, Andy McDonald would come to town before the circus to distribute billboards and other advertising, to hang banners, and to publicize the show.  He would check on contracts, arrange for feed for the circus animals, and confirm all of the other details of running an involved operation like a circus. 

In addition to promoting the circuses, Andrew managed his own act.  An article from 1879 described the exciting races Andy McDonald held at the state fair in Minnesota.  Andrew ran Roman chariots.  As a charioteer, he had two chariots drawn by four black and four white horses described as Kentucky racers.  A lady drove one of the spirited teams and a man the other.  The horses were so wild that they could not be driven on ordinary roads.  Several men had to hold them until they were brought on the track and the drivers were placed in the chariots.  The horses ran a half-mile dash in 57 seconds. 

Andy was a circus man through the 1870s and 1880s.  He eventually left the demanding life of the circus.  In June of 1900, at age 64, then a carriage blacksmith, Andy lived with Addie, his wife of 31 years, in Chicago.  He died in 1903.

Both Robinson and Costello’s circuses went belly up as did so many others.  Barnum joined Bailey’s Great Show which ultimately merged with Ringling Bros. of Baraboo, Wisconsin to form the most enduring circus of the 20th century--Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus.