The First Circus in Hamilton County

By David Heighway, Hamilton County Historian

I’ve covered early circus activity in Hamilton County before. Pushing it farther back, we have a record of the earliest appearance of a circus or menagerie show in the county. A reminiscence by Augustus Finch Shirts in the Hamilton County Democrat newspaper October 2, 1891 was titled “Our First Show” and said:

“The question has frequently been asked where the tent for the first show that visited Noblesville was pitched. Draw a line from the northwest corner of Citizens’ bank building to the southeast corner of the boarding house of Mrs. Stuart and at about the half way point is the spot. There was but one canvas and that was small. An elephant, a pony, a monkey and one lion were the principal attraction. The elephant served a double purpose. He was large and strong and had been trained to push the wagons out of the mud when they stuck, which they often did; the other use was exhibition purposes. I remember he was driven into the river to please the boys. This was done by spouting the water as they called it. I remember one man approached too near the lion’s cage and was caught by the arm, which was severely lacerated. The monkey met with an accident, being thrown from his pony, or rather the monkey in some of his antics missed his point, but he was up and at it again. Shows then as well as now were great attractions, but were soon over. This one, however, was not forgotten by the writer at least.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regrettably, he doesn’t give a date for this. Shirts was born in 1824, so it would have been at a time when he was old enough to remember events. Menagerie shows were traveling through Indiana as early as 1833. In fact, the man who was injured by the lion was not unusual, since a man had actually been killed by an elephant in 1834 in Covington, Indiana.

The statement about the elephant pushing the wagons illustrates the transportation issues that these shows would have had to deal with. There was no railroad through Indiana until 1847 and no railroad line to Noblesville until 1851. In all likelihood, the show probably came to Indiana via the Wabash or Ohio rivers and then traveled on major trails like the Lafayette Trace. Having the elephant available to push on rough roads was probably very handy.

The site that Shirts describes is apparently somewhere on the block at the southeast corner of the square. The buildings that he mentions were contemporary to 1891 and were not there in the 1830s or 1840s. The Citizens Bank building is now The Nesst. It’s not clear where the Stuart boarding house was.

The first identified traveling show in Noblesville was Spalding’s North American Circus which visited in September of 1847. While Spalding’s was much larger than the show described here, it didn’t have an elephant. Its emphasis seemed to be on acrobats and theatrical performances.

So, sometime in the 1830s or early 1840s, the people of Noblesville saw something that had probably only existed in books for them prior to that time. The story conjures up the extraordinary image of an elephant on the ancient trails used first by the Native Americans and then by the pioneers. William Conner could have been one of the spectators during its appearance in Noblesville. It’s very different than what you usually imagine about the early days of Hamilton County.