Real Life Water for Elephants

Right, so over Thanksgiving break I signed up for Ancestry.com for the first time and have been using it during study breaks (weird, I know). I don't know if any of you have tried the site, but if you try for a search, sometimes you get very helpful information... and sometimes you get the most random databases you can imagine. The other day I finally got far enough along the Sells part of the tree to the 1800s where I had been told by my father that our family owned a circus. That's right, the Sells' Brother Circus was established and wintered in Dublin, OH. I have an old print of a poster of theirs back in the basement at home. However, I never really knew any specifics until Ancestry (in all its glory) sent me on a link chase that led me to an article written in The Short North Gazette about the Sells' mansion and circus. Out of pure and utter curiosity I clicked on it and began to read.

I don't know if any of you have read the book Water for Elephants, but as I was learning about my family there were some rather eerie coincidences to the popular novel. For one, the wife of one of the brothers who owned the circus had issues with committing adultery, even after he bought her a giant mansion to live in. Another is that they didn't really reach their fame until they started acquiring elephants (they eventually owned up to 13). There was also a death by an elephant named Sid, picking a trainer up by his trunk and flinging him into a wall. Fun fact: he did it again later with a patron in New York but apparently was too popular in the show to be put down so NY gave him a pardon and he continued performing. There were many other incidents as well that bespoke of the severe lack of safety precautions in early circuses. My favorite is one of the many reported escapes of animals at their winter lodgings in Dublin where a man was walking home from work and came across 5 loose polar bears. It makes me think of the times I complained about coming across deer...

All in all it was an interesting find that I most likely would not have thought to look for myself. Ancestry might not have helped me find my grandparents' marriage certificate, but they gave me an interesting background on a fun piece of my family history.

Original story here!