This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Robinson Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/3cDBAIB/8183 Message Board Post: This might be a good source as to leanring more about the Robinson circus..... America's Successful Men of Affairs: An Encyclopedia of Contemporaneous Biography Volume I B James Stanton Bailey page 53 JAMES ANTHONY BAILEY, showman, was born in Detroit, Mich., in 1847. Sacrificing the advantages of a comfortable home, a spirit of enterprise led him at an early age to secure work upon a farm at $3.50 per month. This occupation proved dull, and he proceeded on foot to Pontiac, Mich., and found employment as call boy in a hotel. An agent of "Robinson & Lake's circus", while a guest of this hotel, attracted by [p.53] the brightness and energy of the boy, then gave him a place in the corps of advance agents of the show. He left the circus business in 1864 to become advertising agent of a theatre in Nashville, then served as clerk to an army sutler, witnessing all the battles from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and finally accepted a place once more in the advance corps of the old circus. Here, he became so valuable that James E. Cooper offered him an equal partnership in the circus business, and the firm of Cooper & Bailey was thereupon formed. His enterprise resulted in a tour of t! he Sandwich Islands, Australia, New Zealand, India and South America with the circus, which proved successful. Upon the return to America, the Great London Circus was bought and added to that of Cooper & Bailey and the firm engaged in a contest with P. T. Barnum, which was conducted with so much shrewdness and energy, as to force Mr. Barnum to abandon his favorite territory in the East. Mr. Barnum then offered Mr. Bailey a partnership, which was accepted, leading to the firm of Barnum & Bailey. In October, 1894, Mr. Bailey bought the interest of the heirs of his partner and so became sole proprietor of The Barnum-Bailey Greatest Show on Earth, which he yet conducts. His winter quarters are at Bridgeport, Conn. In 1868, Mr. Bailey married Ruth Louisa McCaddon in Zanesville, O.