Waterbury evening Democrat., 1891-04-08
BARNUM'S BUSY LIFE.
Nearly Half Century He Has Been Be
 fore the Public.

Nearly HaIt Q century He Been kbS-
 fore the Public.
 Phineas Taylor Barnum was born in Bethel, Conn.,, July 5, 1910. His father was a country innkeeper and merchant in a small way. Phineas from the age of 13 to Is years, was in many different businesses, part of the time in Brooklyn and part in New York City.
 He gathered together n little money and came back to Bethel and started a little store. He took the agency for lottery chartered by the State to build the Groton monument. He failed in busi- ness in 1929, got married and started a newspaper called the Herald of Free dom.
 It was not long before he was in jail for libel In 1884 he brought to New York colored woman, Joyce Heth, said to be 161 years old and the nurse of George Washington. A post mortem showed she had added so years to her age.
 But Barnum had got taste of the show business and never afterward forsook it. He travelled through the South with one- horse circuses, which were generally un- successful. In lS41, without a dollar of his own, he bought out Scudder's Museum, renamed it, and managed to make it pay. He brought out Charles S. Stratton (Tom Thumb) then less than two feet high and weighing only 16 pounds.
 He took the dwarf through the United States and Europe and made money. But it was in 1S49, when he brought Jen- ny Lind over and got her to sing in Cas- tie Garden, New York, that he first made a national reputation for himself He paid her $1 ,000 a night, and the gross re- ceipts of a tour of 95 concerts were $712,- 1I1.
 Booming Bridgeport.
 He retired from business in 1855, and devoted his attention to booming the town of East Bridgeport, Conn. In or der to encourage manufacturing com pany to establish itself there he indorsed their notes for nearly $1,000, ,000. The company failed and Barnum went into bankruptcy, but he had settled fortune upon his wife and he started in the show business again.
 He took charge of his old museum once more. It was then at the corner of Broadway and Ann street, New York. While there he astonished the vestry of Trinity Church by asking permission to stretch an advertising banner from his museum to the steeple of St. Paul's chapel.
 This was the finest specimen of sublime nerve then known to the American peo- pie. On July 13, 1865, the museum burn. ed down, and he got an unlimited quan' tity of advertising out of it by securing the publication of most gaudy account of the way the orang-outang and the lion and other denizens of the tropical forests took the conaagration. He re built it and again it burned. In 1871 he established a travelling mu scum and added numerous features, like the hippodrome and elephant races, to the old circus. Never was @ travelling show so advertised, and the country boys for weeks bored over his Advance Courier with more interest than that given to any | yellow-backed novel.
 l He used to give temperance lectures from the ring and was himself a promi uent feature in the street parade. Four Times Q Mayor.
 Mir. Barnum was four times a member of the Connecticut Legislature and ( mayor of Bridgeport. He presented tha city with public park.
 | He also gave a stone museum to Tuft'i | College, near Boston. His autobiography several times rewritten, and a story called stLion Jack" are among his lit erary achievements.
 MT. Barnum made his will severa years ago. His estate will inventor. 5000. GOO, and it is understood that | ' win Do equally divided among hi1 h1irg