Background
Adam John Forepaugh was born into poverty in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to John A. Forepaugh, a butcher, and Susannah Heimer.
Adam John Forepaugh was born into poverty in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to John A. Forepaugh, a butcher, and Susannah Heimer.
He began working in a butcher shop at age 9, earning just $4 a month. After a short time Forepaugh "ran away" to Ohio where he got into cattle appraising and managing stage lines.
At twenty, having learned the butchering trade thoroughly, he set out for the West. In time he settled in Cincinnati and in a shop of his own earned the capital to establish a stage-line business in Philadelphia. This in turn he relinquished to deal in horses, which he had learned to judge expertly.
He supplied the animals for some of the early horse-car lines of New York and also for a large number of the two hundred or more circuses which were roving over the United States.
In 1862 he sold horses to the famous Johnny O’Brien Circus but at the end of the season had to take a share in the business in payment. He and O’Brien divided the show in 1864.
O’Brien took the Great National Circus on the road, while Forepaugh remained in Philadelphia with the most famous of American clowns, Dan Rice, who had brought with him his trick horse, Excelsior, and his trained Burmese cattle.
This attraction brought him such success that by 1868 he was giving Rice a thousand dollars a week and paying his expenses. He had already bought a very good menagerie belonging to Jerry Mabie, the first of the smaller circusmen whose shows he absorbed. In 1868 he tried dividing his show, sending one part East and the other West, but since he was never satisfied to delegate responsibility, he reunited the shows at the end of the season.
In the following year he put his circus into two tents, one for the menagerie and one for the performance. This innovation drew in a great many people from the churches, who could look at animals with a free conscience, but who had scruples about watching human performers.
By 1877 the circus was so large that he had to give up slow horse transportation and travel on railroads. Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth was now his most formidable rival, but the two showmen came into open conflict only in 1880, when they began to compete with each other in the same towns.
The expense of the rivalry was so large that Barnum sued for peace and in 1882 a contract was signed which provided for a division of the routes between them, though the armistice was only temporary. Forepaugh in his twenty-six years as the owner of a circus had only one partner, O’Brien, from whom he parted at the end of their third year together.
During his career he attended to all important matters himself, checking his own payrolls and frequently counting the ticket returns. He bought the food-stuffs in each town and usually appeared in the cook-tent to do the butchering. His show was, distinctly, the show of Adam Forepaugh, and he always, sat on the opening day in an open pavilion in front of the big tent, receiving friends and welcoming newcomers. His red face and flying side-whiskers were familiar to all.