Storyteller's Cabin
Throughout his life, Charlie Sparks, owner of Sparks World Famous Shows, knew how to please an audience. He was the son of English music hall performers and, by age eight, was performing as part of the highly regarded Jack Harvey Minstrels as a drummer and World Champion Clogger. When his father died, he sang and danced on street corners to support his widowed mother.
Charlie's circus days began when, during a tour stop in Utah, he and his mother met a vaudeville performer named John H. Weisman at the hotel where they were staying. Weisman was quite impressed with young Charlie's performing skills, and quickly befriended both Charlie and his mother. They became such good friends that, when Charlie's mother fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, she asked Weisman to care for Charlie. Shortly thereafter, Weisman not only adopted Charlie, but took the unusual step of changing his own last name to Sparks - perhaps because it was a more "circus sounding" name.
Father and son performed together as an after show act until 1890, when John H. organized his first small circus, the Sparks and Allen Wagon Show. It was later renamed John H. Sparks Virginia Shows and, for a small horse and wagon operation, was quite successful. In 1901, when Charlie was 25, his father grew weary of touring and bought a hotel near Winston-Salem, North Carolina, adding a fishing lake and a small zoo. In an ironic twist, John H. was bitten by a lion cub in this zoo, causing an infection that would lead to his death two years later.
This tragedy left Charlie in full control of the circus. He knew that, for his show to thrive, it had to latch onto the vast network of railroads that were spreading across the country at that time. Sometime after 1903, he moved the show on the rails, starting with just one rail car, performing horses and ponies, and draft stock.
As the railroad grew, so did the show, which was later renamed Sparks World Famous Shows. By 1916, it had ballooned into a successful, 15-car circus with clowns, acrobats, horses, lions and elephants. Some of Charlie's performers were so skilled that mighty Barnum and Bailey Circus tried to steal them away. Charlie became a trusted and well-respected figure in the circus world, and was a common sight strolling down the street in his Stetson hat and cane, a smoldering cigar in his mouth.
Without a doubt, the star of Sparks World Famous Shows was Mary, a giant Asian elephant. She was advertised on Sparks posters as "The Largest Living Land Animal on Earth," weighing "over 5 tons" and standing "3 inches taller than Jumbo," the star elephant of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Crowds throughout the country roared with delight as Mary performed tricks like standing on her head, playing musical instruments and pitching a baseball. But it was her size that awed many people from rural communities who had never seen an animal this large or exotic. Mary was valued anywhere from $8,000 to $20,000, and was the primary reason many people came to the show.
But Mary was more than just a performer to Charlie Sparks. His father had purchased Mary in 1898 when she was four years old, and she had been the family pet ever since. After Charlie married Addie Mitchell, the circus's head cook and animal doctor, Mary, in essence, became the child that this childless couple never had. Charlie firmly instructed his employees to be kind, gentle and respectful to all his animals, especially his beloved Mary.
Despite the show's success, it still lagged behind its major competitor in the South, John Robinson's Four Ring Circus and Menagerie, which boasted 42 railroad cars and larger numbers of performers and animals. Competition between the two circuses and other traveling shows became so fierce that each resorted to unique tactics to separate itself from the others.
Being a family-owned circus, Sparks World Famous Shows advertised itself as a "100% Sunday School Circus," meaning that it was fair and honest with the public, and allowed no short changing of customers. To avoid tipping off rival shows, Charlie kept his routes under his hat, and rarely advertised in circus trade papers. Mere days before his show arrived in town, his scouts would plaster the area with colorful posters.
On the morning of September 11, 1916, before the circus arrived in the small mining community of St. Paul, Virginia, a local hotel worker named Walter "Red" Eldridge spotted one of these posters. He was about to change the life of the Sparks circus forever.
