Background

Ethnicity: Barnum was of Colonial American (English) ancestry, with roots in Connecticut going back to the early/mid 1600s.

Phineas Taylor Barnum was born on July 5, 181 in Bethel, Connecticut, the United States, a small town about four miles southeast of Danbury. His father, Philo Barnum, was a farmer, tailor, tavern keeper, and grocer, who had 10 children by two wives. Phineas was Philo’s sixth child and the first by his second wife, Irene.

When Philo died, his son was just 15 years old and was forced to find the means to support his mother and five brothers and sisters.

Education

Phineas was described as a strong student who excelled in mathematics and despised physical labor.

Career

Barnum’s knack for moneymaking first manifested during his youth in Bethel, Connecticut. The future showman sold snacks and homemade cherry rum during local gatherings, and by age 12, he had made enough money to purchase his own livestock. After his father’s death in 1825, Barnum liquidated the family assets and went to work at a general store in Grassy Plains just outside Bethel. Barnum moved to New York City as a young man and tried his hand at a variety of businesses, including newspaper publishing and running a boarding house.

At 22, as the publisher of the Herald of Freedom, he was jailed for libelous accusing a deacon of usury; upon his release 60 days later, Barnum was met by a band and "a coach drawn by six horses" for a parade back to town. His career as the self-proclaimed "Prince of Humbugs" was launched at the age of 25 when a customer named Coley Bartram entered the grocery store Barnum had started with John Moody. Bartram knew Phineas had a weakness for speculative investments, and he was looking to sell a "curiosity."

Barnum was transformed from shopkeeper to showman when he discovered an elderly black woman, Joice Heth, who claimed to be George Washington's nurse. A promoter in Philadelphia had not had much financial success when he tried to present Heth as the president's 161-year old nurse. On August 6, 1835, Barnum paid $1,000 for the rights to exhibit Heth for 10 months. Under Barnum's management, Heth was promoted by sensational advertisements and toured the country telling her supposed memories of the president's childhood.

When ticket sales to the exhibit finally started to fade, Barnum sparked new interest in a manner he often employed; he sent anonymous letters to the newspapers declaring the show was a hoax. One story he circulated claimed that Heth was not even a human, but an automaton, constructed of whalebone, India rubber, and numberless springs. Her so-called memories, the letter declared, were imaginary conversations actually told by the exhibitor who was a ventriloquist. People returned to see if they could figure out the truth of the matter. Upon Heth's death, an autopsy showed that she was actually around 80 years old. Barnum claimed that he was the victim of a hoax.

Barnum bought Scudder's American Museum in lower Manhattan in 1841 and reopened it as Barnum's American Museum. There he displayed the "Feejee Mermaid" and other oddities of dubious authenticity among what eventually expanded to a collection of 850,000 exhibits. In 1842, Barnum met 4-year-old Charles Sherwood Stratton, who stood 25 inches tall and weighed 15 pounds. Sensing another potential windfall, Barnum trained the boy to sing and dance and revealed him to the public as "General Tom Thumb." The massive popularity of the exhibit led to a traveling tour of Europe, which included an audience with British monarch Queen Victoria, King Louis-Philippe of France, and other monarchs.

Barnum was relentless both in tracking down oddities and in promoting his museum. He set powerful floodlights and giant flowing banners atop his building. He advertised free roof-top concerts and then supplied the worst musicians he could find in hopes of driving crowds away from the noise and into the relative peace of the museum. Despite the nature of his human exhibits Barnum was not simply entertaining the uneducated masses.

Barnum understood that people enjoy being fooled if they are knowing participants in the ruse. As he once said, "My dear sir, the bigger the humbug, the better the people will like it." Barnum not only wanted to make money with his shows, but he also appears to have enjoyed the excitement of making each "discovery" more outrageous than the previous one.

Although Barnum is famous for developing the Barnum and Bailey Circus, this business was something of a postscript to his career. He formed his first circus in 1871, at the age of 61, promoting it as "the greatest show on earth." He transformed the typically small, wagon based show into a railroad-traveling, three-ring, electrically lit extravaganza. In 1881, he merged with his main competitor, James A. Bailey, to form Barnum and Bailey's Circus, which became the most popular circus in the country.

Although he became famous for championing the weird and wacky, one of Barnum's most successful ventures came with the promotion of Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind in the early 1850s.

After hearing about Lind's sold-out concerts in Europe, Barnum made the "Swedish Nightingale" an offer of $1,000 per performance for 150 shows in the United States and Canada. He reportedly hoped to improve his public image as the owner of a dime-store museum. It was risky since Barnum had never actually heard Lind sing. He launched a public relations blitz, including newspaper coverage and competitions. His bet paid off, earning Barnum a profit of more than $500,000.

In July 1865, Barnum's American Museum burned to the ground in a massive fire. The promoter soon opened another museum at a nearby location, but this one also was demolished by a fire, in March 1868.

Barnum retired from the museum business and teamed up with circus owners Dan Castello and William C. Coup. Together they launched Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Hippodrome in 1871. Referring to the traveling spectacle as "The Greatest Show on Earth," Barnum took full ownership of the successful venture by 1875. In 1881, Barnum joined forces with fellow circus managers James A. Bailey and James L. Hutchinson. The following year they introduced "Jumbo," an enormous 11 1/2-foot, 6 1/2-ton elephant from the Zoological Society of London. As with many of Barnum's previous exhibits, Jumbo was a hit with audiences until his death in 1885.

In 1887, an aging Barnum agreed to cede everyday control of the circus, which was rebranded as the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth. Following Barnum’s death in 1890, his Barnum & Bailey show was bought by the rival Ringling brothers in 1907. In 1919 the two were incorporated into the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows. In May 2017, the circus he founded delivered its final performance.

In addition to his show-business career, Barnum sought to transform his adopted hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut, into a thriving metropolis. Barnum went on to serve multiple terms in the Connecticut legislature and was elected mayor of Bridgeport in 1875. He helped found the Bridgeport Hospital soon afterward, and was named its first president.

Along with his reputation as the "Prince of Humbugs," Barnum owed much of his fame to the runaway success of his autobiography. "The Life of P.T. Barnum, Written by Himself" was first released in 1854 and was then continuously re-edited and re-issued over the following decades. New editions and appendices appeared on a near-annual basis, and Barnum helped increase sales by putting the book in the public domain and allowing anyone to publish it. He even instructed his widow to write a new chapter that chronicled the events of his 1891 death. All told, the book sold more than 1 million copies during Barnum’s lifetime.

Achievements

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  Barnum made popular such amusements as the public museum and the musical concert. Together with Bailey, he made the American circus a popular and gigantic performance, the so-called Greatest Show on Earth. The Tufts University Biology Building is named in honor of Barnum. Jumbo eventually became the mascot of Tufts University, in honor of Barnum's 1889 donation of the elephant's stuffed hide.
  
  In 1936, for the centennial of the city of Bridgeport, Connecticut, his portrait was used for the obverse of the commemorative Bridgeport Half Dollar. To honor the 200th anniversary of Barnum's birth, the Bethel Historical Society commissioned a life-size sculpture, created by local resident David Gesualdi, that stands outside the public library. The statue was dedicated on September 26, 2010. The Barnum Museum, located in Bridgeport, Connecticut, is home to many of Barnum's various oddities and curiosities.
  
  He was ranked 67th on the list of 100 most influential figures in American History in an American magazine. In 1952, an Academy Award-winning film, inspired by this circus, titled The Greatest Show on Earth, was directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The Greatest Showman (2017) was also a musical loosely based around P. T. Barnum and his circus. Hugh Jackman plays Barnum and co-produced the film.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Humbugs of the World

    (This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)

    1865
  • Struggles and Triumphs: Or, Forty Years' Recollections of P.T. Barnum

    (Written with the same energy and imagination Barnum broug...)

    1869
  • The Wild Beasts, Birds and Reptiles of the World: The Story of Their Capture

    (A beautifully illustrated volume depicting adventures and...)

    1888
  • The Life of P. T. Barnum

    (For more than fifty years, Phineas T. Barnum embodied all...)

    1855
  • Barnum's Own Story: The Autobiography of P. T. Barnum

    (P. T. Barnum's career of showmanship and charlatanry was ...)

  • Barnum's Humbugs of the World

    (P. T. Barnum's insightful review of humbugs, scams, decei...)

    1865
  • The Art of Money Getting: Golden Rules for Making Money 1880
  • Why I Am A Universalist 1890

Religion

Barnum was a Universalist. During the early 1840s when Barnum lived in New York City he attended the Fourth Universalist Society. About twelve months before his death Barnum wrote out his religious beliefs. Entitled "Why I Am a Universalist" it was first published in London in the Christian World of May 8, 1890. Several Universalist journals soon printed it and many Universalist ministers shared it with their congregations. It was issued as a pamphlet by the Universalist Publishing House and within the year 60,000 copies had been circulated. It was the first Universalist tract that the denomination's missionaries in Japan translated into that language.

At his death, Barnum left the Bridgeport Universalist society a legacy of $15,000. He was just as generous a supporter of causes endorsed by the national Universalist movement.

Politics

Barnum was significantly involved in politics. First being an ardent Democrat, his opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which supported slavery, of 1854 led him to leave the Democratic Party to become a member of the new anti-slavery Republican Party.

Barnum first dipped his toes in the political waters in 1865, when he won a seat in the Connecticut General Assembly as a Republican. Despite his past ownership of the slave Joice Heth, he quickly distinguished himself as one of the legislature’s most impassioned advocates of African American equality and voting rights.

He later tried to run for the United States Congress - ironically, against a distant relative also named Barnum - but lost in a heated campaign. Following a stint as mayor of his adopted hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut, Barnum later returned to the Connecticut Legislator in the late 1870s and became a leading advocate for pro-temperance reforms and the abolition of the death penalty.

Views

Barnum helped found Tufts University. The university was founded by the Universalist Church and, as a Christian Universalist, Barnum was one of the school’s earliest benefactors. Later on, he donated his collection of animal specimens to the school. This included the stuffed elephant named Jumbo who, while alive, was part of one of Barnum’s most successful acts. Jumbo would go on to become the university’s mascot for almost 100 years until his remains were destroyed in a 1975 fire.

Quotations: "The noblest art is that of making others happy."

"Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself."

"No man ever went broke overestimating the ignorance of the American public."

"Every crowd has a silver lining."

Personality

Close friends regarded Barnum as good-natured, thoughtful, and kind, as well as parsimonious and egotistical. Ever the perfectionist, Barnum requested that the Evening Sun newspaper print his obituary a couple of weeks before his death so that he would have a chance to read it before he actually died. Barnum approved of the writeup.

Barnum really didn’t like alcohol. Throughout most of his career, Barnum was a staunch supporter of the temperance movement. While he was mayor of Bridgeport, he instituted and enforced strict liquor laws. Other notable mayoral acts of his included cracking down on prostitution, cleaning the water supply, and illuminating the streets using gaslight.

Physical Characteristics: At the peak of his career, Barnum’s own appearance was nearly as familiar to the public as the exhibits he promoted. An impressive figure six feet two inches tall, semi bald, with blue eyes, a bulbous nose, and a potbelly, he called himself the "Prince of Humbugs."

Quotes from others about the person

• "Contrary to popular belief, Barnum's great discovery was not how easy it was to deceive the public, but rather, how much the public enjoyed being deceived." - Daniel Boorstin
  
  "He created the métier of showman on a grandiose scale… He early realized that essential feature of a modern democracy, its readiness to be led to what will amuse and instruct it… His name is a proverb already, and a proverb it will continue." - The Times

Interests

• Music & Bands

  Jenny Lind

Connections

In 1829, at age 19, Barnum married a 21-year-old Bethel woman, Charity Hallett, who was to bear him four daughters. After 44 years of marriage, Charity Barnum died in 1873. The following year, Barnum, who was then 64, took the 24-year-old Nancy Fish, the daughter of a British admirer, for his second wife.

Father:

Philo Barnum

In 1825, Barnum's father died at the age of forty-eight after a six months' illness, leaving a wife and five children and an insolvent estate. There was literally nothing left for the family; the creditors seized everything. Even the small sum which Phineas had loaned his father was held to be the property of a minor, and therefore belonging to the estate. The boy was obliged to borrow money to buy the shoes he wore to the funeral. At fifteen he began the world not only penniless but barefooted.

Mother:

Irene Taylor

Spouse:

Nancy Fish

It was, in short, at the height of his powers when the widowed Barnum married 24-year-old Nancy Fish, an English girl and the daughter of one of Barnum’s longtime friends. The couple remained together until Barnum’s death in 1891.

late spouse:

Charity Hallett

At age 21, Charity Hallett, of Bethel, Connecticut, married Barnum, then 19, in the fall of 1829. They were married for 44 years, and together had four girls, three of whom survived to adulthood.

Daughter:

Caroline Barnum

Caroline Cornelia Barnum, the first child of Phineas Taylor and Charity (Hallett) Barnum, was born on May 27, 1833. She was very close to her father and, as she grew older, often took her mother's place as Barnum's traveling companion.

Daughter:

Frances Irena Barnum

Frances Irena Barnum, a third daughter of Phineas Taylor and Charity (Hallett) Barnum, was born on May 1, 1842, and died April 11, 1844, just a month before her second birthday.

Daughter:

Helen Maria Barnum

Helen Maria Barnum, the second daughter of Phineas Taylor and Charity (Hallett) Barnum, was born on April 18, 1840.

Daughter:

Pauline Taylor Barnum

Pauline Taylor Barnum, the youngest daughter of Phineas Taylor and Charity (Hallett) Barnum, was born on March 1, 1846.

colleague:

James Anthony Bailey

Bailey’s managerial astuteness complemented Barnum’s abilities as a promoter and made their circus the most successful enterprise of its kind in the United States.

References

• BARNUM: A Musical Suggested by the life of P. T. Barnum (A Musical Suggested by the life of P.T. Barnum)
• P.T. Barnum: Greatest Showman on Earth
• P. T. Barnum: Every Crowd Has a Silver Lining (Americans the Spirit of a Nation)
• The Great and Only Barnum: The Tremendous, Stupendous Life of Showman P. T. Barnum
• Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked Tailed Elephant, P.T. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison
• The Peerless Prodigies of P.T. Barnum
• There's a Customer Born Every Minute: P.T. Barnum's Secrets to Business Success
• P.T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man