William Washington (Chilly Billy) Cole. W.W. Cole (1847-1915) was the son of William H. and Mary Ann Cole, performers with the Thomas Cooke Circus of England, one of the first foreign circuses to visit America, coming here in 1836. After a theater fire which ruined the show, Cooke returned to England with most of his family but the former Mary Ann Cooke, now Mrs. William Cole, remained with her husband in America. Their son, William, was born in New York in 1847. After the death of his father, William's mother married circus man Miles Orton on August 27, 1862 and young Cole was brought up in what was then the West and is now the Mid-West on the Orton Show. "From an article in the March-April 1975 Bandwagon by Carl Landrum" |
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
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2 comments:
Those two little guys at the left top of the picture are the Italian midgets the Magri brothers, one of whom later married the Widow Thumb.
There are probably fewer photographs of the Cole show of the 1870s-1880s than any other similar-sized circus of that era. Given so little that's known of the physical appearance of the circus, perhaps they do exist, but remain unidentified?
If Cole had a personal album, it's either gone or hasn't yet come before the eyes of someone who would realize the rarity of the contents.
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