58 Facts About PT Barnum

PT Barnum is widely credited with coining the adage "There's a sucker born every minute", although no evidence has been collected of him saying this.

PT Barnum became a small business owner in his early twenties and founded a weekly newspaper before moving to New York City in 1834.

PT Barnum embarked on an entertainment career, first with a variety troupe called "Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater", and soon after by purchasing Scudder's American Museum which he renamed after himself.

PT Barnum used the museum as a platform to promote hoaxes and human curiosities such as the Fiji mermaid and General Tom Thumb.

PT Barnum suffered economic reversals in the 1850s due to bad investments, as well as years of litigation and public humiliation, but he used a lecture tour as a temperance speaker to emerge from debt.

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PT Barnum's museum added America's first aquarium and expanded the wax-figure department.

PT Barnum served two terms in the Connecticut legislature in 1865 as a Republican for Fairfield, Connecticut.

PT Barnum was elected in 1875 as mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut where he worked to improve the water supply, bring gas lighting to streets, and enforce liquor and prostitution laws.

PT Barnum was instrumental in starting Bridgeport Hospital in 1878 and was its first president.

PT Barnum was married to Charity Hallett from 1829 until her death in 1873, and they had four children.

PT Barnum was buried in Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport, which he designed himself.

PT Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut, the son of innkeeper, tailor, and store-keeper Philo PT Barnum and his second wife Irene Taylor.

PT Barnum's maternal grandfather Phineas Taylor was a Whig, legislator, landowner, justice of the peace, and lottery schemer who had a great influence on him.

PT Barnum had several businesses over the years, including a general store, a book auctioning trade, real estate speculation, and a statewide lottery network.

PT Barnum had worked her for 10 to 12 hours a day, and he hosted a live autopsy of her body in a New York saloon where spectators paid 50 cents to see the dead woman cut up, as he revealed that she was likely half her purported age.

PT Barnum had a year of mixed success with his first variety troupe called "PT Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater", followed by the Panic of 1837 and three years of difficult circumstances.

PT Barnum purchased Scudder's American Museum in 1841, located at Broadway and Ann Street, New York City.

PT Barnum improved the attraction, upgrading the building and adding exhibits, then renamed it "Barnum's American Museum"; it became a popular showplace.

PT Barnum added a lighthouse lamp which attracted attention up and down Broadway and flags along the roof's edge that attracted attention in daytime, while giant paintings of animals between the upper windows drew attention from pedestrians.

In 1842 PT Barnum introduced his first major hoax: a creature with the body of a monkey and the tail of a fish known as the "Feejee" mermaid.

PT Barnum leased it from fellow museum owner Moses Kimball of Boston who became his friend, confidant, and collaborator.

PT Barnum justified his hoaxes by saying that they were advertisements to draw attention to the museum.

PT Barnum followed the mermaid by exhibiting Charles Stratton, the little person called "General Tom Thumb" who was then four years old but was stated to be 11.

In 1843 PT Barnum hired the Native American dancer fu-Hum-Me, the first of many First Nations people whom he presented.

PT Barnum became aware of the popularity of Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale", during his European tour with Tom Thumb when her career was at its height in Europe.

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PT Barnum was confident that he could make use of Lind's reputation for morality and philanthropy in his publicity.

Lind demanded the fee in advance and PT Barnum agreed; this permitted her to raise a fund for charities, principally endowing schools for poor children in Sweden.

PT Barnum's was determined to accumulate as much money as possible for her charities.

PT Barnum wanted to position theaters as palaces of edification and delight, and as respectable middle-class entertainment.

PT Barnum started the nation's first theatrical matinees to encourage families and to lessen the fear of crime.

PT Barnum opened with The Drunkard, a thinly disguised temperance lecture .

PT Barnum followed that with melodramas, farces, and historical plays put on by highly regarded actors.

PT Barnum watered down Shakespearean plays and others such as Uncle Tom's Cabin to make them family entertainment.

PT Barnum organized flower shows, beauty contests, dog shows, and poultry contests, but the most popular were baby contests such as the fattest baby or the handsomest twins.

PT Barnum made substantial loans to the Jerome Clock Company to get it to move to his new industrial area, but the company went bankrupt by 1856, taking Barnum's wealth with it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson proclaimed that PT Barnum's downfall showed "the gods visible again" and other critics celebrated PT Barnum's public dilemma.

PT Barnum started a lecture tour, mostly as a temperance speaker.

PT Barnum went on to create America's first aquarium and to expand the wax figure department of his museum.

Also in 1860, PT Barnum introduced "man-monkey" William Henry Johnson, a microcephalic black little person who spoke a mysterious language created by PT Barnum.

In 1862 he discovered giantess Anna Swan and Commodore Nutt, a new Tom Thumb with whom PT Barnum visited President Abraham Lincoln at the White House.

PT Barnum added pro-Unionist exhibits, lectures, and dramas, and he demonstrated commitment to the cause.

PT Barnum hired Pauline Cushman in 1864, an actress who had served as a spy for the Union, to lecture about her "thrilling adventures" behind Confederate lines.

PT Barnum re-established it at another location in New York City, but this was destroyed by fire in March 1868.

PT Barnum did not enter the circus business until he was 60 years old.

PT Barnum persisted in growing the circus in spite of more fires, train disasters, and other setbacks, and he was aided by circus professionals who ran the daily operations.

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PT Barnum was one of the first circus owners to move his circus by train, on the suggestion of Bailey and other business partners, and probably the first to own his own train.

PT Barnum became known as the "Shakespeare of Advertising" due to his innovative and impressive ideas.

PT Barnum was often referred to as the "Prince of Humbugs", and he saw nothing wrong in entertainers or vendors using hoaxes in promotional material, as long as the public was getting value for money.

PT Barnum mainly focused on race, slavery, and sectionalism in the period leading up to the American Civil War.

PT Barnum opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which supported slavery, so he left the Democratic Party which endorsed slavery and became part of the new anti-slavery Republican Party.

PT Barnum claimed that "politics were always distasteful to me", yet he was elected to the Connecticut legislature in 1865 as Republican representative for Fairfield and served four terms.

PT Barnum hired spies to get insider information on the New York and New Haven Railroad lines and exposed a secret that would raise fares by 20 percent.

PT Barnum was the legislative sponsor of a law enacted by the Connecticut General Assembly in 1879 which prohibited the use of "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception", and made it a crime to act as an accessory to the use of contraception; this law remained in effect in Connecticut until it was overturned in 1965 by the U S Supreme Court in Griswold v Connecticut.

PT Barnum was instrumental in starting Bridgeport Hospital, founded in 1878, and was its first president.

PT Barnum is buried in Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport, Connecticut, a cemetery that he designed.

PT Barnum built four mansions in Bridgeport, Connecticut: Iranistan, Lindencroft, Waldemere, and Marina.

PT Barnum asked the Evening Sun to print his obituary just prior to his death so that he might read it.

An annual six-week PT Barnum Festival was held for many years in Bridgeport as a tribute to PT Barnum.