The show, which would later turn a huge profit, went by many names after that performance, including "Ringling Bros. Classic and Comic Concert Co." The production earned just $13, while the costs to run the show totaled $25.90. The following year, the brothers put on their first "real show," which they consider to be the first official Ringling Brothers circus performance, charging five cents per ticket.Īfter spending a few years supporting both the family business and their own individual pursuits, the Ringling brothers joined together in 1882 to put on a show called "Ringling Bros. The very first show charged an admission price of one cent for the children of McGregor, though the show ended up netting $8.37. Ringling wrote in 1900 that "When the last wagon had rolled slowly up the bank, Al, with a sigh of relaxation, turn to Otto and said: 'What would you say if we had a show like that?' " Ringling states that as he and his brothers walked home for breakfast, they talked together for the first time of having a circus of their own," wrote Henry Ringling North in his memoir " Circus Kings: Our Ringling Family Story."Īlf T. Bailey's widow in 1907 (cofounder PT Barnum, who started Barnum's American Museum, had died 10 years prior).Īfter witnessing show animals arrive by boat one early morning in 1870, the Ringling brothers decided to form their own circus. The second-youngest brother John Ringling was instrumental in the deal, purchasing the circus from James A. Circus merger with the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Though they started with one- and five-cent shows, the Ringling brothers would later own a "flock of circuses" eventually combined to form the "Greatest Show on Earth" - a name adopted in 1919 after the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is leaving town for good after 146 years and Barnum & Bailey Circus closed on May 21, 2017. After many more decades of performances, Ringling Bros. The only Ringling sister's children helped restore much of the family's wealth before they sold the company to the Feld family in 1967 for $22.8 million. This soon became a traveling railroad production, and merged with Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1909. Once one of the richest families in America, the Ringling Brothers - Albert, Augustus, Otto, Alfred, Charles, John, and Henry - started their circus as a five-cent show in rural Iowa. His estate, including a Venetian palazzo and expansive art collection, was appraised at $23.5 million. 'Circus King' John Ringling - formerly ranked among the wealthiest people in the world - died with just $311 in his bank account. The rise and fall of the Ringling empire follows seven brothers and one sister through the heyday of the Roaring Twenties to financial downfall during the Great Depression.
The circus no longer comes to town - and gone with it is the Ringling family fortune that helped build "The Greatest Show on Earth."
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