Last week we left Barnum in a state of great anxiety as he tried to work out a settlement to compensate the people who’d been injured at the theatre in Airdrie, Scotland.

Thank you for all the wonderful views and feedback on the Barnum Museum’s YouTube channel!  This week’s episode: The Miniature Walnut Carriage of Commodore Nutt!

Late February of 1846 was proving to be a difficult time for P. T. Barnum, as a group of uncharacteristically short letters reveals. 

Among the special attractions P. T. Barnum purchased in Europe for his American Museum in New York was a lifelike figure made of wax, but this Parisian model was no ordinary wax figure.

The letters in P. T. Barnum’s copybook only occasionally make reference to his political views, but in late January of 1846 Barnum was moved to share his opinion about one of many “hot topics” in the United Kingdom at that time, the repeal of Corn Laws.

It’s time to check in again on the Barnum family circle after several weeks of topics pertaining to business concerns. 

The “Happy Family” of birds and beasts was among P. T. Barnum’s most popular and long-running exhibitions at the American Museum in New York. 

P. T. Barnum was an inveterate letter-writer who had no trouble filling sheet after sheet to certain correspondents, and so his twelve-page epistle to Alanson Taylor, which we explored in the previous two blogposts, is not altogether surprising.

P. T. Barnum’s twelve-page letter to Alanson Taylor, dated January 21st, 1846, and written in Dunfermline, Scotland, gives us a lot to unpack—no “small talk” takes up space on those pages!