Book smart

Ringlingville USA: The Stupendous Story of Seven Siblings and Their Stunning Circus Success
Jerry Apps, professor emeritus, continuing and vocational education
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2004

Their era was ripe with possibilities, and the Ringling brothers took every opportunity to pluck as many as they could.

“The book is really an old-fashioned story,” says Apps. “The Ringlings’ lives testify to how hard work, attention to detail, care about the customer, offering an excellent product, and forging ahead in good times and bad can lead to success. In time, the circus they established became the largest and most prominent show in the world.”

And the United States welcomed that show, being more than ready to be entertained after weathering the Civil War.

“In the late 1800s and early 1900s America was discovering itself as a nation. Vast areas were still largely unsettled and quite frontier-like. The Ringling Bros. Circus was the major source of entertainment for often new and isolated rural communities,” he says.

August Ringling Sr., father of the brothers, eventually migrated from Milwaukee to Baraboo, where he opened a harness-making shop. Apps says that the town provided critical advantages for the circus.

“Good water and ample feed sources for their animals were major reasons. During the later years in Baraboo, 1910-1918 or so, the Ringlings had as many as 500 horses, 45 elephants and many other animals all requiring housing, care and feeding,” says Apps.

Of course, the circus was in residence during Wisconsin’s rigorous winter, and the season was a distinct negative. In time, state government also became a liability.

“The state was mostly accommodating to them during the early years of the circus. But it became a love-hate relationship, with the brothers threatening to leave the state almost every year by the early 1900s. The Ringlings were furious when Wisconsin passed an income tax law in 1911; they did not actually leave (for Bridgeport, Conn., winter quarters for Barnum and Bailey) until 1918,” Apps says.

Apps himself is a product of rural Wisconsin. His 37 years at UW–Madison focused on agriculture and education. He also has written extensively about Midwestern rural history. His reading list includes histories of Wisconsin breweries, cheese making, one-room country schools, barns, mills and the UW Cooperative Extension. Other subjects include rural humor and children’s books about rural histories. His latest novel, “The Travels of Increase Joseph” (Badger Books, 2003), follows an itinerant preacher who gains rare insight after lightening strikes him.

Indeed, Apps is now at work on another novel, set in the Wisconsin countryside during the summer of 1955. The new story will take place in the same town as “Increase Joseph,” he says.

Behind all his books is a singular mission, Apps says.

“I would like people to say ‘Hey! History can be fun, especially when written as a story,'” he says, adding that an appreciation of history is also vital to society’s growth and survival. “We as a people can’t know where we are going unless we know where we have been.”

Apps will sign copies of his books on Saturday, Dec. 11, at Prairie Bookstore in Mount Horeb.