The Monday After: Flying high in the 'big top'

It was 75 years ago that the circus came to town.

This wasn't just any circus. It was THE circus.

Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus – America's circus – arrived in the city in 1947 amid nasty summer weather, pitched its "big top" tent in mud, and still delighted circus fans despite the weather.

"Circus Conquers Mud to Stage Glittering Show," a front-page headline in The Canton Repository said on July 17, 1947. "Big Top's Thrills Fulfill Colossal Publicity Claims."

And, perhaps no one in Stark County was as pleased to see this particular circus perform in the area than Edythe Siegrist of Perry Township, who, coincidentally, soon was departing her Richville home and heading to a house in Florida.

You see, Siegrist at the time was sorting through old belongings, packing away cherished mementos for her move south. Many of those memories were recollections of the decade she spent as a circus aerialist, first for the Barnum & Bailey Circus and then for the combined Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey show.

"A career which included 10 consecutive years with a headline attraction of 'The Greatest Show on Earth' was being relived here today as Mrs. Edythe Siegrist sorted trunks full of faded newspaper clippings, old photographs and souvenirs in preparation for moving to Florida for the rest of her life," said the Repository on Aug. 31, 1947.

"One of the mementos was a calendar of 1910 which showed a beautiful girl with long black hair," the newspaper feature reported. "She posed for that at the age of 15, a few months before she met the man who was to start her on a great career as an aerial star.

"Edythe Griffey (Edythe Siegrist after she married), the baker's daughter, didn't realize at the time that her face was becoming familiar all over the country as a 1910 calendar girl. To her it was just a 'bonanza' job of posing for an artist at one dollar an hour."

Edythe gets job with the circus

The young soon-to-be circus performer also didn't realize, the profile article noted, "that she was on the threshhold of the biggest decision of her life when she went with her mother to see a Shrine circus in Columbus (Ohio) shortly after her 16th birthday in January, 1910."

"Charles Siegrist, a trapeze artist with the Barnum & Bailey Circus, had brought his act to Columbus to play in the Shrine event as part of his independent tour while Barnum & Bailey was in winter quarters, recalled the profile.

"When he saw Edythe Griffey, he decided to cancel his newspaper ads for a girl to join his company," the article noted. "During the week the act played in Columbus, he succeeded in talking both Edythe and her mother into the idea."

A chaperone for the young woman was secured, and Edythe accompanied Siegrist's circus act  when it left Columbus. After three months with the show, she "married the boss," a widower with two sons, she recalled in the Repository profile. Three years later they welcomed their son, Billy, and moved their family to Canton after performing in the city during the "off-season" for tent circuses.

"The old Canton auditorium had never had an aerial act before they played there while the Barnum show was in winter quarters early in 1913," explained the Repository. "Special supporting rigging was put in the ceiling for their act and served many others which followed it.

"While in Canton they decided to make the city their permanent home – the place their children stayed when they were not with the show."

Edythe and Charles Siegrist bought a house at 12th Street and Fulton Road NW, the newspaper recalled, and moved to it the following winter. The family unit that blossomed in Stark County with the move was a combination of "three households," noted the Repository. It included Charles and Edythe and their son Billy, who was born a month the circus couple settled in Canton. It also brought Edythe's mother and two younger children from Columbus to live in Richville, And Charles Siegrist's two sons came from Canton, Pennsylvania, where they had lived since their mother's death.

Circus still became her career

Meanwhile, the circus continued to call to the Siegrists, although trapeze work "was not easy to Edythe," the Repository recalled in profiling her.

"It was strenuous and painful work for strong men and it was torture to the slight girl who hadn't been able to pose more than three hours at a time for the calendar artist," the newspaper said.

Edythe Siegrist admitted to the Repository writer that "I was awfully slow in getting started."

"I didn't get the idea at all."

For a full year the novice trapeze artist didn't perform in public as she "strugged to learn simple trapeze work and the art of landing in a net without injury. During her first summer, an infection in her soon-swollen left arm led to blood poisoning, leaving her arm in a sling when the act accompanied the Barnum & Bailey Circus to New York.

"She was ready to give up the whole idea, but her mother wrote to 'try a little harder.'" Mom's words were "the turning point," Edythe told the Repository in 1947 and, enduring the never-ending pain she began to "get the idea." A few months after she started to make improvements in her performance, and not long after her son was born, her husband decided she was strong enough to begin "making catches."

"She made her first catch in England, hanging from a stationary horizontal bar," recalled the Repository. "After months of practice between shows this was made part of the act. Later she began catching from the flying trapeze and eventually gained the distinction of being the only woman (at the time) ever to catch an entire act, including heavy men performers."

The Barnum & Bailey Circus, which John Ringling had managed for years, eventually merged with Ringling Brothers Circus, which Charles Ringling had been directing. Edythe was, as John Ringling described her, "the beauty of Barnum & Bailey," but, as the Repository reported in its profile, "the Ringling Brothers company also had their top beauty in Jennie Rooney, also an aerial performer."

"Everybody expected a feud to develop between the two when the shows were combined in 1917," said the Repository in 1947, "but they became very close friends."

'Beginning of the end'

The Siegrists' act rose to "higher and higher fame," noted the newspaper.

"Edythe added another strenuous act early in the 20s when she and her sister, Dorothy Griffis, worked out an act in which they hung by their teeth," recalled the Repository. "The main trapeze act reached its zenith in 1928 when the troup had so many finished performers that Mr. Siegrist divided it into two units, sending one out as Edythe's troup (playing parks, fairs and festivals) while he kept the other group with the big top."

For Edythe Siegrist, it was "the beginning of the end," the newspaper said, noting that she "returned to Richville to look after her stepfather after the death or her mother."

Siegrist's husband, at 63, was still touring in 1947, while her son, Billy, and one of her stepsons, Joe, both had aerialist acts. So, although no stories in the Repository reported that she attended a performance of "The Greatest Show on Earth" when it came to Canton, it could be assumed that she, at the very least, avidly read stories in the newspaper about the visit to Canton of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

A few weeks later she fondly remembered memories of her  life after running away with the circus.

"It has all been very glamorous."

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: The Monday After: Flying high in the 'big top'