Weird Island

12: ELEPHANT BRIDGE: Wonder, Cruelty, and the First Elephants in America

Episode Summary

In 1826, one of the earliest elephants brought to America, named Betty, the Fabulous Learned Elephant (or Little Bett), made a fateful visit to Chepachet. To Visit: 1169 Main Street, Glocester, RI 02814 | Plaque on the bridge where route 44 crosses the Chepachet River, just south of the Old Post Office Antiques, 1178 Putnam Pike

Episode Notes

Episode Source Material: 

(Research for this episode turned up a lot of inconsistent dates and references to elephants by different names, ages, heights, weights, etc.--there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on where the Crowninshield elephant ended up or if Old Bet was the first or second elephant in America. I did my best to reference only the most apparently legitimate sources in my storytelling, but recognize that opinions differ on some details.)

• The First Living Elephant in America
• Memorial to Betty the Learned Elephant – Glocester, Rhode Island
• Off The Path Revisited: The Elephant Man
• An Elephant is Murdered in Chepachet in 1826 - Online Review of Rhode Island History
• Betty The Learned Elephant
• Elephant Shot In Chepachet – 1826
• Walking Tour Chepachet, RI
• American Heritage | Setting the Record Straight on Old Bet
• The Crowninshield Elephant
• The First Living Elephant in America
• A PACHYDERM'S TALE
• Old Bet
• American Circus Anthology, Traveling Menagerie
• The Elephant Comes to America
• Killing the Elephant: Murderous Beasts and the Thrill of Retribution
• Town of Somers History Beasts and Ballyhoo Menagerie Men of Somers
• America’s Big Circus Spectacular Has a Long and Cherished History
• Old Bet: The first circus elephant brought to the US was killed by a religious fanatic
• RANDOM NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY AMERICAN CIRCUS
• Never Forget - Down East
• Year Without a Summer
• Was America’s First Circus Elephant in Haverhill?
• Elephants in the (Reading) Room

Episode Transcription

• Hi! I’m Sara, and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up, from my tiny little state of Rhode Island. This week, I’ll be telling you the strange and tragic story of two of the first elephants brought to America--Old Bett and Little Bett, the Fabulous Learned Elephant. Stick with me on this one--I promise you, this is a Rhode Island story, but I don’t get there until the end!
• Imagine having never seen an elephant. Not in real life, not in a book, and not on TV. It’s a weird thought, because today pretty much everyone knows what an elephant looks like. But there was once a point in time when most people had never seen an elephant, or a lion, or a camel, or a zebra. Seeing an elephant for the first time must have been like seeing a dinosaur.
• The first elephant arrived in America in 1796, on board a ship named “America.” The captain of the ship was Jacob Crowninshield, who came from a seafaring family that ran the shipping firm George Crowninshield & Sons out of Salem, MA. Jacob was one of five sons, each captaining a different ship. While in India, he purchased a two year old female elephant for $450, with the intention of bringing her to America and selling her for a profit. He guessed he could get $5,000 dollars for her, but his brother Benjamin didn’t agree. Jacob wrote a letter to two of his other brothers, George and John, who were jointly captaining another ship at the time, and said, “This is my plan. Ben did not come into it, so if it succeeds, I ought to have the whole credit and honor, too. Of course you know it will be a great thing to carry the first elephant to America.” 
• And he was right. People were amazed to see the elephant walk off the ship when it arrived on April 13, 1976 in New York. Days later, an article in the Argus, or Greenleaf’s New Daily Advertiser, a NY Newspaper, wrote about the elephant’s arrival, noting Jacob as the captain who had brought the amazing animal to America. They hailed it as “a great curiosity.” And later, the Philadelphia Aurora would write that Jacob had in fact made a profit on the elephant, but he didn’t sell it for $5,000 -- He sold it for $10,000. Double what he had expected. I’m sure he rubbed that in his brother’s face! And on top of that, today, the elephant is referred to as the Crowningshield elephant -- so Jacob got the honor, too, at least for his family.
• Sources claim he sold the elephant to a “Welshman named Owen, from Philadelphia” though it’s unclear who Owen might have been. But what is known is that after being sold, the elephant went on a tour of the east coast, first traveling from NY to Philadelphia, then to Baltimore. She wintered in the south, then came back up north to be seen in NY, Boston, Providence, and Salem, among other places. There are a fair number of handbills and newspaper advertisements noting her course up and down the coast between 1796 and 1798.
• This wasn’t common, exactly, but it was starting to become the trend as large, exotic animals were making their way to America. Owners quickly realized that people would pay just to see the animal, so they would be toured and shown for a fee. For a larger animal, like an elephant, a showman or trainer would care for the animal, taking it from town to town and arranging exhibitions in barns, stables, inns, or sometimes in taverns. An entrance fee was charged, and when people stopped showing up, the show would just pack up and move on to the next town. The trainer would often walk the elephant from place to place at night, so people couldn’t get a free glimpse.
• There was one man who really made a name for himself in this arena, and that was Hachaliah Bailey. Bailey was a cattle farmer out of a town now called Somers, NY. But he was always looking for new, innovative ways to make an income. Somers town historian, Doris Jane Smith, says, “Hachaliah was not a pleasant-looking man. But Hachaliah had a lot of perseverance and a lot of Barnum in him. He knew how to make money. Sometimes in a way people thought was a little strange.” She goes on to explain how at one point, he recognized that the main street he lived on had a lot of traffic, so he put up a toll booth and charged people to pass. And later, he would stumble upon another great opportunity--one that would define the rest of his life. Hachaliah crossed paths with an elephant. 
• It’s unclear exactly where Hachaliah comes into the elephant’s story. There are conflicting and imperfect records that make it difficult to know if Hachaliah potentially purchased the Crowninshield elephant or if it was a second elephant brought to America. But anecdotally, Bailey drove his cattle from Somers to stockyards in New York City’s Bowery district. And cattle drivers would frequent a tavern called the Bull’s Head Tavern at the corner of Beaver Street and Broadway, which just so happens to be the first place where the Crowninshield elephant was exhibited when she arrived in America on April 13, 1796. It’s possible Bailey was in the tavern and saw the elephant’s ability to amaze and mezmerize crowds of people and it inspired him to get one of his own. Or, potentially, he may have been involved with the purchase of that elephant. Bailey did have a brother-in-law by the name of Owen--and Owen was the name of the man who had supposedly purchased the Crowninshield elephant. So maybe Bailey owned the first elephant in America, but it’s impossible to confirm. That could have also just been a coincidence. 
• He did definitely own one of the first elephants in America, though, and he became one of the first Americans to make a business out of touring exotic animals for public entertainment. His first elephant was named Old Bet, and whether she was the first or second elephant in America, and was, at the very least, the first to be known by name. He toured her throughout the east coast, charging 25 cents per viewing. One newspaper article estimated he was making $3,000 annually with Old Bet, but it’s likely in some years he made more. In 1808, he took on two partners, Benjamin Lent and Andrew Brunn, who each paid $1200 for a ⅓ interest in the elephant. So he proved it could be a profitable business, and he inspired others to get involved in exhibiting exotic animals as well. This led to a thriving business of traveling menageries along the east coast. 
• After years of touring, Old Bet was making her way from Massachusetts to Maine, lumbering from town to town, when tragedy struck. It was July of 1816, “the year without a summer,” and Old Bet likely walked by barren fields that would normally have been filled with crops. Severe climate abnormalities had caused average global temperatures to drop, and frost persisted through May in many east coast towns. It had even snowed just a month before Old Bet visited Maine. There were major food shortages, and farmers were struggling to get by. 
• According to Bruce Tucker, of the Alfred, Maine Historical Society, local farmer Daniel Davis and his brother were two of those struggling farmers. They made the difficult decision to mortgage their farms to build a sawmill--but when Davis’ brother died unexpectedly, the responsibility for both families and the sawmill fell on Daniel. It’s possible that when Daniel saw Old Bet and her trainer come into town, he was enraged by the idea of poor, suffering people spending what little money they had on something as frivolous as seeing an elephant. Filled with anger, desperation, and maybe even a little jealousy, Davis shot Old Bet, killing her on the spot.
• The Merrimack Intelligencer reported, “In the afternoon of that day, this harmless and interesting animal was leaving the town of Alfred, by a road skirted with bushes, accompanied by her keepers and fifteen or twenty spectators, when a musket was fired from the covert, which lodged two balls in a vital of her body, a little at the rear of the shoulder bone -- the animal traveled about a half mile, fell and expired. The balls passed within a few inches of some of the persons in company.” The article, which was published a little under a month after the incident, concludes by saying, “We do not recollect an event of the kind which ever excited stronger public indignation against the perpetrator than this barbarous outrage." 
• Surely Hachaliah was outraged as well, but he didn’t let this shake him. Always the businessman, he had her skeleton and hide preserved and continued to show her remains. First her skeleton was exhibited. Later, the New York Evening Post announced that the American Museum in New York had purchased the whole hide of poor Old Bet. They wrote, “She is now put up in as good a style as is possible to expect considering her immense size.”  
• And Hachaliah didn’t give up on touring live elephants either, because what are the odds that another one of his elephants would get shot, right? It’s one of those things that happens, and it’s so unlikely and such bad luck that you think, “Well, now that it’s happened, it is just that much more unlikely to happen again.” But you’re probably starting to guess where this is going.
• A year after Old Bet died, he purchased two new elephants. One, named Columbus, was advertised as the first male elephant in America. The other, was another female--who he called “Betty the Fabulous Learned Elephant,” or “Little Bett.” Is it a bad sign that they both had almost the same name? 
• As with Old Bett, Bailey leased Little Bett to partners who toured her all over the east coast. Old Bet had amazed crowds just by being huge and exotic, but Little Bett took it a step further. She performed tricks! In 1822, she made her first of two visits to Chepachet, RI, and the handbill raved, “The learned elephant, which for sagacity and docility, exceeds any one ever imported into this country… a female twelve years old seven feet six inches high… [she will] kneel to the company, balance her body alternately on each pair of legs, present her right foot to enable her keeper or any other person to mount her trunk, carry them about the room and safely replace them, draw a cork from a filled bottle and drink the contents and then present the empty bottle and cork to her keeper. She will lie down, sit up, and rise at command, bows and whistles at request, answers to the call of her keeper, besides many other marks of sagacity.” 
• Little Bett dazzled the people of Chepachet, then left to wander the coast for another four years before returning on May 25, 1826. But this time, her visit to Chepachet would, sadly, be her last. 
• It was midnight, and Little Bett and her trainer had just put on a show, and were crossing the bridge out of town, headed to Smithfield, when shots rang out from the window of an apartment in a grist mill overlooking the bridge. According to a Providence Journal article, Bett was struck five times, and died on the spot. As she fell, she was shot twice more. Two men were questioned, and they confessed. In total, six young men were involved. The Journal article stated, “In the whole course of this arduous investigation, which occupied more than a day, no direct motive was shown that could have induced the act. It appears to have been done thoughtlessly in pure love of mischief, and just for the pleasure of killing an elephant. Unfortunately, the parties are not men of much substance, though it is believed some part of the value of the noble animal they have destroyed may be obtained from them eventually.” 
• Though the article doesn’t state this, some rumors suggested elephant showmen would boast during shows that an elephant’s hide was so thick, no bullet could pierce it. So, perhaps the young men wanted to find out? But, I don’t know. Does it take seven shots to figure that out? 
• For many years, the town of Chepachet was pretty quiet about the whole thing. But on May 25, 1976 - the 150 year anniversary of the tragic event - the town proclaimed the day Elephant Day, and a plaque remembering Little Bett was placed on the bridge crossing the Chepachet River. 
• By the 1840s, traveling menageries had started to peter out, and they really didn’t survive as their own exhibit past the Civil War. But these menageries began to be combined with other touring entertainers, all caravaning in groups rather than touring solo, and charging for one ticket to see both. This aggregated act became the modern American version of the traveling circus. Some sites suggest these shootings may have played a role, as the threat of violence encouraged acts to travel together. It’s not exactly a legacy to be proud of--Rhode Island being home to men who shot one of the earliest elephants brought to America--but perhaps the outcome is the silver lining. Because these traveling acts evolved into the circuses that delighted kids and adults for many years. 
• These days, you’re unlikely to see an elephant in the circus, as most states have banned the use of exotic animals in circus shows. And in 2017, the biggest circus, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey shut down. But for many years, circus elephants stole the show.
• When Old Bet and Little Bett were traveling through Rhode Island in the late 1700s and early 1800s, they were such an incredible sight that the phrase, “seeing the elephant,” began to be used as a claim of worldly experience, wonder and excitement. The phrase would evolve over the following decades. People venturing west to California would excitedly set out on the trails, anxious to “see the elephant” that was new opportunity and life out west. But the journey proved difficult and many were disillusioned, and the phrase evolved into its current meaning--referring to gaining experience of the world at a significant cost. Perhaps Hachaliah was “seeing the elephant” after two of his elephants were shot while touring. He continued to lease his sole remaining elephant, Columbus, to be toured, but he never replaced Little Bett. He opened up a hotel in his hometown of Somers, NY, called the Elephant Hotel, and placed a small, guilt statue of Old Bet out front to memorialize her and the other elephants he loved. But, while Hachaliah might have gotten out of the business at the end of his life, members of his family continued on the circus tradition. 
• I’m sure you’ve been thinking that the name Bailey sounds familiar. Hachaliah wasn’t the Bailey of the famous “Barnum and Bailey” duo--but he was a distant relative. He got the whole family (and many in his town) into the circus business with his traveling act. Later, a nephew of his named Frederic Harrison Bailey, who was working as a circus advertiser, would come across an orphaned teenager named James Anthony McGinnis and hire him as his assistant. McGinnis later took Bailey’s name, and went on to partner with P.T. Barnum to create Barnum and Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth. So, it all started with Hachaliah Bailey, even if he wasn’t the one who eventually went on to make the Bailey name famous. 
• You can go visit the bridge in Chepachet where Little Bett was shot. But instead of focusing on her death, think about how incredible it would have been to see an elephant for the very first time. See plaque that was placed on the bridge to memorialize her, and you can check out some other elephant themed memorabilia placed around the town - including a giant Potato Head decorated to look like an elephant. 
• Thanks for listening! If you like this episode, share it with family and friends! Or leave a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. If you have a topic you’d like to hear about, you can email me at Weird Rhode Island at Gmail.com. See you next week as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island. Until next time!