This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/EkDBAIB/5697.1 Message Board Post: I recently became interested in the Spalding and Rogers circus and in the Floating Palace. I just found this write up of Dr. Spalding, his circus ventures and his partnerships with Charles J. Rogers. Charles Rogers is just mentioned in passing as "the English equestrian". There is some good information on the Floating Palace as well. I hope this helps. (My Rogers family was connected to New Orleans. If you have any Rogers family who lived in New Orleans before 1860, I would be interested in knowing about them.) http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA02/amacker/circus_backup/ch_3.txt [exerpted from chapter 3 of a history of circuses (?) published on the web at the above address:] RIVER SHOWS In 1843, an Albany pharmacist named "Doc" Gilbert R. Spalding got hooked on the circus business by a bad debt. He soon earned a considerable name for himself up and down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers with various partners and circuses for over twenty years. He was an important, inventive risk-taker, generally credited with a lot of firsts in the circus business, many of which may be reliable records. He is said to have invented the quarter pole, to keep the canvas off the heads of his audiences. He is also credited with developing the efficient jack-and-stringer type of seating arrangement which survives in small circuses to this day. His was the first circus to use a mechanical precursor to the calliope, and the first to convert from candles and oil lamps to gaslight. In 1853, he was among the first to experiment with railroad travel: his "Railroad Circus and Crystal Palace" exhibited in Detroit, although probably only with a few stock cars. Three years later he ordered nine specially-built railroad cars for his new Spaulding & Rogers Railroad Circus, which carried no menageries or parade equipment. The cars had adjustable axles and may or may not have been designed to actually drive off the tracks to a circus lot, but this isn't really clear. In any case, they were used for only one season, before Spalding evidently decided that railroad circuses were not yet practical. Spalding's most famous enterprise was the Floating Palace, which he undertook in partnership with the English equestrian, Charles Rogers. From 1852 until the Civil War made them stop, this luxurious barge visited ports all along the Mississippi and Ohio, and usually wintered in New Orleans. The barge had only a four foot draft, but it contained a full 42 foot circus ring, and could seat perhaps as many as 2,400 spectators. The menagerie was carried on the tow boat, one of two magnificent show boats owned by Spalding, the Banjo and the James Raymond, on which other performances were also presented. They ranged from minstrel shows to dramatic performances, from Shakespeare to the temperance comedy, Ten Nights in a Bar Room.