A lawyer in Burlington, Vermont, in the early nineteenth century, David Stone, had not one, but two sons run away from home in that time-honored pursuit, to join the circus. Not willing to accept this, the father twice brought the elder brother, Eaton Stone, back to Burlington before giving up, and allowing him to be apprenticed to Nathan Howes. Dennison, the younger son by six years, soon bolted himself, also to Howes, and because of the battle already fought by the elder brother, was allowed to remain with the venerable showman.
Eaton was born in 1818, and caught on with Howes in 1831. The first time he ran away was in 1828, at the behest of a traveling ventriloquist, and his father had to sue the man for kidnapping in order to reclaim the boy. It was after another adventure with an unknown circus that Stone senior relented. Dennison, born in 1824, joined his brother in 1835. It is to the profit of circus history that father Stone finally decided that argument was hopeless, as Eaton became one of the leading riders in the country before the Civil War, and Dennison became a successful clown, and later a noted circus proprietor.
Eaton Stone said of himself in an interview, “From early childhood I liked horses, and took to riding as naturally I suppose as young ducks do to water. I commenced in the ring at eight years of age, and enjoyed riding so much that there never was any paying necessary to make me work, and nothing could have induced me to leave off.” (1) In that same interview he claimed that Howes paid him $150 a week, but this is doubtful. He described his duties as plate spinning, tumbling, and horse grooming. If he was paid at all, it was more in the realm of eight or nine dollars. Most of his public pronouncements were made when he was elderly, and like most old men he was wont to gild the lily.
Nathan Howes’ 1833 troupe (later Howes & Sands) is not welldocumented, there being but three known dates in the whole season, and it was not until 1903 that it was known that Eaton Stone had been a member. (2) This length of time could indicate an error in identification, as George Stone was a clown with that company.
In 1834 and 1835 Eaton was with Buckley, Weeks & Co., a large show for the time, and the participants in which were correctly identified by Stone in one of his interviews. These proved to be Matthew Buckley and Edward C. Weeks, proprietors, and Joseph Thompson, manager. It was possibly the largest circus of the time, having forty horses, eight wagons and thirty-five persons. (3) Names famous in future years filled its rosters. John J. Robinson, James A. Rowe, William Lake, and Spencer Stokes were among the performers destined to lead their own companies in the years to come. For an apprentice to be exposed to so much talent, and thus learn a great deal about his profession would seem to be axiomatic. We know of no troupe that contributed more to the twenty years of circus history that followed than that of Buckley, Weeks & Co.
Stone observed that the rider’s costumes with the circus consisted of short jackets with lace collars, knee breeches, and stockings. This was prior to the days of tights, and had been the standard since the days of John Bill Ricketts in the 1790s. Such apparel was mentioned by John Robinson as late as 1852, when he asked permission of the Connecticut Legislature to be allowed to perform in that State.
Nate Howes had a one-year connection with the Zoological Institute in 1835, but like Aron Turner, apparently chafed under the supervision of menagerie men, and returned to operating a circus without a menagerie. For 1836 he framed “The Eagle Circus,” William Delavan, manager. Nate’s younger brothers, Seth B. and Wilson Howes, were with it, as was Richard Sands. Among the five apprentices with the company were Eaton Stone, and his brother Dennison. That first season Delavan toured New York and New Jersey, and produced a winter show for three months in Baltimore. This was one of the first circuses in which the seating surrounded the ring. It was also one of three troupes using the name “Eagle.”
Ben Brown was the ringmaster, and the man in charge of the apprentices. According to Eaton Stone, Brown let the boy ride one of Seth B. Howes’ horses surreptitiously. Howes caught him at it one morning, and suggested he stick to plate spinning.
Delavan gave way to Ira Cole for the 1837 road season, in which the circus went into Ohio and Kentucky. It was the first tour in the West for a Howes troupe, and Eaton’s apprenticeship. Wilson Howes assured the boy that he’d make a fine rider, and proved to be prophetic when Eaton gained a place on the program in Lexington. In September, the title was changed to Cole & Co.’s Western Circus. In October, in Cincinnati, Dennison Stone, still an apprentice, also saw his name on the bills.
Cole took the company into St. Louis where he combined it with the menagerie and circus of Miller, Yale & Sands. This company had traveled in Illinois and Missouri during 1837. It was the first troupe to advertise in trans-Mississippi Missouri outside St. Louis. They ended their season in Fairfield, Illinois, and then marched 110 miles to St. Louis, a week’s journey, to appear with Cole from 21 November to 20 December. (4) The managers of Miller, Yale & Sands were John Miller, Enoch C. Yale, and Richard Sands. The combined force was titled Cole, Miller, Yale & Co.
Richard Sands was the equestrian manager, George Stone the clown, Harvey Whitlock the bareback rider, and Napoleon and Timothy Turner the pad riders. They had a cage of cat animals (one lion, one tiger) in which a keeper entered to begin each performance, but his name was not disclosed. (5) It might have been John Shaffer. An unknown female elephant under the care of Agrippa Martin was also part of the group. For such a large circus (we count eleven performers plus five apprentices) to appear in the West made sense in a city the size of St. Louis (population, 5,852 in 1830), but for the small towns of Illinois and Missouri such a caravan was overwhelming. Thus, the company was split in 1838. Ira Cole’s name was dropped after St. Louis, and Yale, Sands & Co. became the title through most of 1838, later appearing as Miller, Yale & Howes. The persistence of Enoch Yale’s name indicates he was financially interested, though no mention of him was otherwise made. And it’s very possible that the Howes in the title was Seth B., not Nathan.
The division into two companies occurred in St. Louis in May, 1838. Richard Sands took Whitlock, Den Stone, John Shaffer and the leopard den, plus six others to northern Illinois and Michigan under the title H. A. Woodward & Co. Woodward, mentioned nowhere prior to this, was an agent for the Mabie brothers in the early fifties.
Seth B. Howes took the rest of the St. Louis company into rural Iowa. Eaton Stone was now doing a principal act in addition to his plate spinning turn, John May was the clown, Seth Howes and J. W. Jackson were the pad riders.
We mentioned the task of translating some of Stone’s memories in light of other facts known to us, and the most confusing aspect of his career are remarks he made concerning 1838 and 1839. Yale, Sands & Co. was in Jefferson City, Missouri in May, 1838, and Fort Madison, Iowa, in late August. Stone says they played Fort Gibson (Arkansas then, Oklahoma now), and that they charged one dollar admission. Fort Gibson was one of those places referred to as a site of “Indian payments,” where 3 million dollars was disbursed to the displaced tribes. Such a bounty was a perfect place for a circus to play. This must have been in the summer of 1838. Oddly, no one else mentioned this seeming bonanza.
Stone says he then went to the Cross Timbers in Texas, and on to Chihuahua, Mexico. There is nothing in the record that indicates such a trip by the Howes show, and it may be that Stone was traveling alone. He claimed that Indians (Comanches, apparently) kept him captive for most of a year, and that he escaped by stealing a fast pony and riding to the settlements on the Red River. This episode concurs with his absence from any roster in 1839. (6) In reporting such adventures, we are somewhat at the mercy of the newspaper writer, whose ability to transcribe Stone’s statements could well have been faulty. As an example, the unnamed scribe in Buffalo wrote that Stone was the first man to perform a somersault on a barebacked horse, which we know to be untrue.
Stone later credited the Indians with teaching him “riding tricks no white man knew, and therefore I made a sensation for years in the Indian act on a wild prairie horse.” Apparently, part of the fascination he had for the Indians were conjuring tricks he had learned as a boy when he traveled with the ventriloquist, the man his father sued. Another part was his ability to ride wild horses. He had shown such an aptitude back when he traveled with Buckley, Weeks & Co.
“I learned fast riding during my three (sic) years’ life with the Comanche Indians in Texas. I required a very fast-going horse, and no one has ever ridden faster than I.” (7) His claim of being three years with the Indians doesn’t square with the facts, as we found them.
Indian acts were the most common of the scenic acts seen in the early nineteenth century circus. Introduced in 1826 by Sam Tatnall, and soon a part of most programs, this turn involved a rider, dressed appropriately, performing a pantomime of Indian habits, such as hunting and warfare. Tatnall called his “Indian Hunter,” but it had many names over the years, including “Flying Indian,” “Indian War Dance,” and “Indian Chief.” William Blanchard, William Harrington, Alec Jackson, and Seth B. Howes were all early riders who presented the act. Its popularity lasted into the mid-1850s, and was the first manifestation of arenic interest in Native Americana.
Stone changed the Indian act by turning it into a wild affair, with a galloping horse on which he rode bareback, emitting war whoops. He dressed in beaded costumes, which he claimed Indian women had made for him, and wore facial paint. Previous scenic acts had been much tamer, moved at a canter, and had only costume to mark them as being of Indian origin.
Later in his career he was called “The Devil Rider,” and he had a horse to match the description. Named “Selim,” the beast had been broken by Stone and only he could ride it. It was supposedly the fastest horse in the circus ring, and would not move at anything less than a gallop. Stone had to mount the animal in the stall, and ride into the ring at breakneck speed.
Once there, the rider would stand on the horse, leap to ground and back, do a head stand, and, because of the animal’s speed, seem to stick to its flanks.
The audience, just a few feet from the ring curb, was justifiably alarmed by these antics, a wild horse with a wild rider. People were known to move away from their seats, fearing that Selim might cast a shoe, but he never did, though on occasion he was known to bolt over the ring fence into the seats. At the conclusion of the act Stone did not dismount, but had to ride the horse into his stall before it would halt. Historically, Stone was anticipating the later-famous “jockey acts,” and the introduction of the “finish horse.”
Free of his Indian captors, Stone went from the Red River to Little Rock, Arkansas. There he joined one of James Raymond’s units, sometime in the summer of 1840. This company was under the management of D. R. Lines (Stone spells it “Lyons.”). His brother Dennison was the clown with this troupe. Lemuel Word, or Ward, was the equestrian director, Eaton Stone the bareback rider, two pad riders, Jones and Conklin, and Thomas McCollum, apprentice rider. But the big feature with the company was the elephant Columbus. There were also five cages of wild animals. “Took in heaps of money,” Stone stated, and credited it to the presence of the elephant, perhaps only the second one seen in the Mississippi Valley.
If, as Stone reported, this circus and menagerie went into Texas, it was one of the first to do so. No show advertisements are seen there until 1851. James Raymond had two of his three 1840 menagerie-circus combinations in the South. These were D. R. Lines & Co., and what was called Grand Caravan of Living Animals (a generic title), managed by J. L. Humphrey. Lines had Columbus, as we said, and Humphrey had Bolivar. The two caravans were combined in Algiers, Louisiana, prior to crossing the river to New Orleans as one entity. It was here that Columbus went berserk, attacking Bolivar, killed Bolivar’s keeper, George Crumb, broke up a cage, and lunged at spectators.
“Lem Word and I saved several children by throwing them down an embankment,” Stone reported. “Over 100 men with shotguns followed Columbus thirty miles down the coast, and peppered his hide with shot.” George Graver, the keeper, finally recaptured the animal in a swamp. They opened the combined show on 25 February at St. Charles and Poydras Streets, in New Orleans with Columbus in leg chains. Thousands of people paid a dollar each to see him.
The show went east in April, 1841, but the Stone brothers did not accompany it. That same winter, 1840-1841, Ludlow and Smith, the theatrical producers, added a circus troupe to their company, which opened in the American Theater in New Orleans 19 November 1840. John Robinson was in charge of these performers, which included Master James Henandez, the eight-year old wonder, Barney Carroll, William Lake and Gilbert Eldred.
Eaton and Den Stone joined this troupe at least as early as March 1841. Eaton did his plate spinning (called “Grecian Exercises” in the ads), and rode the scenic Indian act. The equestrians were sent off on their own once the Raymond menageries closed, and traveled to Mobile, Alabama, where they were joined by Fogg & Stickney’s circus. Their route led to St. Louis, then to Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and back to New Orleans, and finally to the last three days of the year in Mobile. February, 1842, was spent in Havana, Cuba, and the troupe was disbanded in March in New Orleans.
In April, 1842, John Robinson and Joseph Foster organized their first circus, called The National Circus Co., for which they hired the Stones, Gilbert Eldred, Juan Hernandez, Spencer Stokes, and Rosaline Stickney. Sam Stickney was the equestrian director. The circus played the cities on the Mississippi and the Ohio, beginning and ending in New Orleans. The 1843 season was spent in Alabama, Tennessee and in a return to Mobile.
In August, 1843, Sam Stickney resigned to organize his own company, opening in Lexington, Kentucky on 2 August. He took his daughter Rosaline, and the Stone brothers with him, and hired a dozen other performers, which made his the largest show in the West that season. Much of the 1844 tour consisted of long stands in Ohio River cities. In August, 1844, Matt Buckley became Stickney’s partner, and the Stone brothers seem to have resigned at that time. They were not listed in the roster of Stickney & Buckley’s troupe in the winter show in New Orleans, but Eaton was the bareback rider for Stickney (now sole proprietor again) in the 1845 tour of the same river towns.
Den Stone and Thomas McCollum framed a new circus in 1846, a propitious year in which to do so, as business was good, especially in the West. This was partly because of the awareness of that part of the country brought about by the War with Mexico. There were four large circuses (relatively speaking) west of the Ohio, and all of them prospered. New lands, new villages, and new settlers contributed to the boom in the equestrian arts.
Stone & McCollum’s Great Western Circus was organized in New Orleans, where they chartered a steamboat, the Franklin, loaded seventy employees on it, and went upriver to the opening date, Cincinnati, on 23 April. Eaton and Den Stone both presented bareback scenic acts, but McCollum was the featured rider. He threw six backward somersaults over a canvas during a single run about the ring, “his splendid steed running with the velocity of a rail car,” as the Pittsburgh Morning Post observed. (8) The company went up and down the Ohio, up to St. Louis and down to New Orleans where they presented a three-month winter show.
Stone & McCollum operated for four successful seasons, 1846 through 1849, and Eaton Stone was with them until mid-season 1849. It was in 1846 that he married Elizabeth Radcliff, a non-professional of Fredericksburg, Virginia. They were together for fifty years.
Eaton was advertised as “the greatest bareback rider in the world; justly acknowledged so by the elite, and the profession generally,” in 1848. Deciding who was and who was not a bareback rider in the 1840s is a difficult task. The reason is that no particular distinction was made between the two methods; one was not considered as requiring more aptitude than the other until some time after the Rebellion. For instance, Levi J. North, arguably the greatest rider in the world in prebellum days, always used a pad. We can only identify three bareback riders in 1848, when the above statement was used. These were John Glenroy, W. B. (Barney) Carroll, and Eaton Stone.
There were probably others, but they didn’t announce themselves as such. Scenic riding, made famous by the great Andrew Ducrow, was the ne plus ultra of riding arts at the time.
Having spent twelve years in the West, Stone decided to test himself before eastern audiences in 1850. He was accepted as one of the leading artists on the Mississippi, earned a good salary (over $100 a week) plus his horse expense, but even greater awards seemingly awaited him in the big cities.
Rufus Welch was the leading circus proprietor in America at the time. He had two troupes (Welch’s National Circus and Welch, Delavan & Nathans), and dominated New York and Pennsylvania, as well as the winter show scene in Philadelphia. Welch hired Stone for his winter show at the National Theater November, 1849, through March 1850, as well as for the summer touring season. He advertised the Indian act as “The Warrior of the Wilds,” and gave him the penultimate spot on the program. Sam Stickney, and the Derious and Rivers families also participated. Welch described Stone’s contribution in this way: “This extraordinary equestrian, of whose skill and daring volumes have been written wherever he has performed, appears in two distinct acts of horsemanship, in neither of which does he use saddle or bridle on his superb steeds, though they are both as wild and untamable as when he first lassood (sic) them.”
During Welch’s 1850-1851 winter show in Philadelphia, Stone rode in opposition to performances by both Jenny Lind and Edwin Forrest, and claimed he drew more money nightly than they did. (9) On 5 May 1851, Welch sent Stone to England in what was to be a three-year venture. Levi J. North had done the same thing twice in the period 1838 to 1843 and was received with acclaim by the Europeans. Stone’s experience was to find himself at least as popular abroad as he was at home.
Welch agreed to pay Stone half the receipts of the tour, and to provide for Mrs. Stone, and a groom, and two horses. He opened at the Drury Lane Theater in London, and the receipts were the largest at that hall in thirty-one years on the occasion of his benefit at the end a fourweek stand. Stone’s daring work and the savage methods he had learned from the Indians thrilled English audiences.
“I used to scare the wits out of the Englishmen,” Stone reported, “for I would let Selim loose when a rough crowd got too near the ropes. Sometimes the horse would take a shoot into the crowd . . . and the bullies would scatter in all directions.” (10) It was not unusual for persons to tip Stone’s groom half a crown to see the horse in the stable.
From London he went to Dublin, Liverpool, Glasgow, and other cities. Two English showmen offered to bankroll a circus for him and give him a third of the receipts, but he went home in 1855. The London Times said of him that he was the best bareback rider ever seen in that city.
For the next four seasons, Stone rode for the Raymond interests. James Raymond had died in 1853, and his heirs, the wives of Chauncey Weeks and J. J. Drake continued the firm. The title in 1855 was Van Amburgh, Stone & Tyler, which was a menagerie, and Den Stone’s Circus and Tyler’s Indian Exhibition. In 1856 it was Herr Driesbach & Co.; in 1857 Van Amburgh Menagerie and Circus Co.; in 1858, Van Amburgh’s Zoological and Equestrian Co. In two of those years, 1855 and 1856, Stone and Tyler were attached for winter tours in the South to the Mabie brothers’ show, and Eaton accompanied them. “The one great horseman of the world,” was the manner in which the Raymond firm advertised him.
James Melville, the great Australian rider, joined Van Amburgh in 1858, and this might have been the reason Stone transferred to Sands Nathans & Co. for 1859. But he was back with The Great Van Amburgh Show in St. Louis for their opening stand in 1860.
He then did an unusual thing. He removed to Kansas, as did his brother, Den. He wrote the New York Clipper, which published a letter from him on 9 February 1861, saying that the paper hadn’t heard from him in ten months, and that he had collected and was training a herd of buffalo. On 23 March, the Clipper announced that Stone was about to tour with his buffalo herd.
He arrived in New York on 19 April, and proceeded to drive ten buffalo in tandem up Broadway to Harlem. He exhibited the brutes at Jones’ Woods in New York until August, when they were placed with Nixon & Sloat’s circus in Brooklyn. By 23 November all the buffalo had died, and it was hinted later that they had been poisoned.
Stone and his brother then became performers for S. P. Stickney at the Bowery Theater.
In 1862, Eaton was with Thayer & Noyes, where he appeared with two of the more talented riders of the age, John Glenroy and James Robinson. Here was a contrast in age; Stone being forty-four, Glenroy thirty-four, and Robinson twenty-four. It was also a contrast in style; Stone presenting his “Wild Horseman” act; Glenroy depending on his ability as a somersault rider; Robinson outdoing both at everything.
In October, 1862, James Thayer and Eaton Stone opened in Washington, D. C. with Nixon’s Cremorne Garden Circus, named after the London pleasure garden. Nixon dubbed Stone “The Wizard Horseman . . . he ranks at the head of equestrians, and never fails to startle, electrify, and please. . . .” Stone stayed the next season with Nixon, and was said to perform on a barebacked horse carrying “his son” on his head. This may have been Willie Carroll, an apprentice of Barney Carroll, who was also with Nixon. Barney was an originator of the head carry. Stone had no apprentices that we know of at that time.
Nixon lauded Stone by declaring him the acknowledged “best horseman that has ever entered the arena.” (11) Nixon was trying to sell tickets, of course, but the honor shines through the verbiage.
Dennison Stone and Frank Rosston framed what was to be a long-running circus, Stone, Rosston & Co. in 1864 (later, Stone, Rosston & Murray), and decided to head the bills with brother Eaton. He was with the new concern only in its first year, and it would be of interest to know why he left. He might well have lost a stop or two, despite his ability; Stone was forty-eight years old in that year.
In 1865 he caught on with the S. O. Wheeler circus, a Boston firm then in its second season. This was definitely a second-class concern. For much of the spring it featured horse-taming presentations by the famed John Rarey, an unusual act for a circus. Besides Stone’s, the only well-known names on the roster were the clown Nat Austin, and the rider Charles Sherwood. Austin was still at the peak of his career, but Sherwood was forty, his salad days behind him.
In April, 1866, Stone boarded the steamboat Marietta as a member of Mike Lipman’s Colossal Combination of Circus and Menagerie, framed in Evansville, Indiana. He was given first place in a roster filled with well-known names including Hiram Marks, Henry Ruggles, the Holland family, Spencer Stokes, and Grizzly Adam’s bears. The circus floated up the Ohio and up and down the Mississippi before turning into the Wabash, and later, the Cumberland. This was Stone’s last effort.
His retirement was announced in the 25 May 1867 New York Clipper, which added that he, “for many years has enjoyed a reputation as the most daring rider of the age, and even now there are but few able to excel him in the performance of those feats which have made his name famous in nearly all parts of the world.”
“I thought it was time (to retire), and because I could afford to,” Stone explained in 1886. He had begun to save his money in the 1840s, and being highly paid, had accumulated a small fortune in the subsequent thirty years. Commodore Vanderbilt took care of his money, as did the Commodore’s son and grandson in subsequent years. Most of it was invested in real estate, of which at one time he owned 2,500 acres in various parts of the country. (12) Stone, unlike so many of his contemporaries who gained fame in the circle, never invested in circuses, which was the downfall of so many performers over the years. The only bad investment we know of was the loss of $10,000 in his ill-fated investment in the buffalo herd in 1861.
He bought a farm near Nutley, New Jersey, where he took pride in his fruit trees and vast lawns. Later, a brownstone quarry was discovered on the property which further enriched him. He built a training barn at Nutley, and allowed performers to use it for practice for some twentyfive years. Here he rented rooms, a ring barn, and stalls.
They called him “The Devil Rider,” in Cuba, and never was an equestrian more aptly named. He died in Nutley on 8 August 1903, and his obituary in the Clipper was typical of the encomiums that he had received in a forty-year performing career: “In daring, Eaton Stone was unsurpassed, and his act, which was accomplished upon a barebacked steed, was wild and fearful. He would urge his horse to do his utmost speed, and without saddle or bridle, sometimes standing on the back of the animal, and sometimes seated upon his flanks, holding on, one scarcely knew how, he careened around the arena with a velocity almost painful to look at.” (13)
Footnotes
1. Chicago Tribune, 28 September 1886.
2. New York Clipper, 15 August 1903.
3. Duluth Herald (MN), 1 February 1904.
4. “Thomas Bennett Diary,” Harvard Theater Library.
5. Eliza W. Farnham, Life in Prairie Land, (University of Illinois, Chicago,
1988).
6. Illustrated Buffalo Express (NY), 6 October 1901.
7. Chicago Tribune, op. cit.
8. Morning Post (Pittsburgh), 3 May 1846.
9. Duluth Herald, op. cit.
10. Ibid.
11. National Intelligencer (Washington, D. C.), 23 October 1862.
12. Chicago Tribune, op. cit.
13. New York Clipper, op. cit.
CHS webmaster J. Griffin, last modified December 2005.