Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1891-04-24
Sketch of His Life.

Phineas Taylor Barnum was born in Beth
ell, Conn.,, July 5, 1910. His father was
country innkeeper and a merchant in q
small way. Phineas, from the age Of thir-
teen to eighteen years, was in many differ
emit businesses part of the time in Brooklyn
and part in New York
He gathered together little money and
came back to Bethel and started a little
store. He took the agency for a lottery
chartered by the State to build the Groton
monument. He failed in business in 1929,
got married and started a newspaper called
the Herald of Freedom.
1t was not long before he was in Jail for
libel. In 1884 he brought to New York a
colored woman, Joyce Heth. said to be 161
years old and the nurse of George Washing.
ton. A post norton examination showed
she had added eighty years to her age.
But Barnum had got taste Of the show
business and never thereafter forsook it, He
travelled through the South with one horse
circuses which were generally unsuccessful
In 1S41, without dollar of his own, he
bought out Scudder's Museum, renamed it,
and managed to make it pay. He brought
out Charles S. Stratton Uom Thumb, then
less than two feet high and weighing only
sixteen pounds.
He took the dwarf through the United
States and Europe and made money. But il
was in 1S49, when he brought Jenny LIND
over and got her to sing in Castle Garden
that he made national reputation for him
self. He paid her $1,000 night, and the
gross receipts Of tour eff ninety-five con
certs were $12, lei.
He retired from business in 1855 and de
voted his attention to booming the town OF
East Bridgeport. In order to encourage
manufacturing company to establish itself
there he Endorsed their notes for nearly 81
100000. The company failed and Barnun
went into bankruptcy, but he had settled
fortune upon his wife and he started into tn.
show business again.
He took charge of his old museum in New
York City once more. 1t was then at the
corner of Broadway and Ann street. 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. Paurs Chapel.
This was the finest specimen of sublin,
nerve then known to the American people
On July Ii, 1865, the museum burned down
and he got an unlimited quantity of adver
Using out of it by securing the publication
of most gaudy account of the way tn,
orang-outang and the lion and other denizens
of the tropical forests took the confagration
Herebult it and again it burned.
In 1871 he established travelling museum
and added numerous features like the hip
podrome and elephant races, to the old cir
Gus. Never was travelling show so adver
tised and the boys for weeks poured over hi
4dUance Courier with more interest thar
that given to any yellow-backed novel.
He used to give temperance lectures from
the ring and was himself a prominent feat
ure of the street parade.
Mr.. Barnum was four times a member OF
the Connecticut Legislature and a Mayor OF
Bridgeport He presented that city with
public park.
He also gave a stone museum to Tufts Col
lege, near Boston. His autobiography, sew
eral times rewritten, and a story callee
Lion Jack" are among his literary achieve
mentS