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What
one historian has called "the most famous circus fight in history"
unfolded in 1873 as Robinson's Circus was preparing to leave Jacksonville
in East Texas.
Jacksonville was a fledgling community in those days. It had been
founded with a post office in 1849, but moved to its present site
in 1872 on the International & Great Northern Railroad.
The story of the fight first appeared in a Dearborn, Michigan, newspaper
and was reprinted by the Jacksonville Daily Progress years
later.
Here is what apparently unfolded.
Robinson's
Circus of Cincinnati, Ohio, opened on a raw, cold day in November
of 1873. The circus' hands had some words with a rowdy crowd of Jacksonville
men before the show opened and, when the show began four or five local
men plopped down in the circus ring where trained horses usually performed.
When the horses were brought into the ring, the local men stopped
them, forcing two circus hands to remove the unruly group.
Later, the group went to the bars in Jacksonville,
started drinking and decided they wanted to arrest a circus manager
named De Vere. They obtained a warrant and went looking for De Vere.
Circus officials, meanwhile, hid De Vere.
Circus owner Jack Robinson, fearing something worse could happen,
ordered his men to pack up their wagons and drive them to a railroad
loading area. There, they were met by a Jacksonville
mob.
As a circus employee was supervising the loading of the wagons on
the train, a shot was fired and the powder of a pistol burned the
face of a circus employee, touching off a melee of additional gun
shots, fights and threats.
The circus employees chased the mobs into the town's business area,
where they hid behind the barred doors of a store. When the circus
hands battered down the door, the locals fled out the back door.
As the riot continued, a circus hand was stabbed in the back, a local
man fired a shotgun at the circus men, but missed and killed a circus
animal, and a circus employee poured a bucket of coal oil on a store
and threatened to set it afire if the mob persisted in their anger.
As the circus train pulled out of town on its way to Houston,
more shots were fired. About a mile and a half out of town, as the
train crossed a trestle, the Jacksonville
mob mounted another gunshot battle, wounding a circus hand.
The mob then telegraphed Houston officials, asking them to arrest
the circus, but the telegraph operator in Jacksonville never sent
the message.
The Robinson Circus didn't return to Texas for years, but when a group
of Texas lawyers came to Cincinnati, Robinson arranged for city officials
to wine and dine the lawyers. One of the lawyers promised to help
wipe out the charges against the circus in Jacksonville.
However, reports claim that when the Robinson Circus returned to Jacksonville
years later, a circus man injured in the l873 riot killed a Jacksonville
man.
After the passage of years, Jacksonville
forgot about the Great Circus Fight and settled down as a quiet, law-abiding
community. |
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