A 150 YEAR RUN! #1

With the recent birth of Prince William, I got to thinking about circus lineages and the question I was so often asked "Whatever caused you to decide to be an elephant trainer?" and of course I didn't, Hiram Orton did a long time ago. It was the hand dealt me. He was a sailor on the Great Lakes and made a home in Portage, Wisconsin, one day 1852 while in Chicago he went to see a circus that was making it's final stand of the season. After the show he decided his children could do everything he saw there and so it began.