Many performers hailed from Stark County.
About a century ago, winter was the season when the city was filled with performers eager to get into rings under the "big top" or onto stages in theaters and opera houses.
"The time has come for all of Canton's vaudeville and circus people to commence practice for the start of the spring and summer season," said an article published in The Canton Repository on Feb. 4, 1917.
The story was printed on Page 3, no doubt positioned there because the presence of many performers in Stark County was hardly fresh news to Repository readers. Many of the performers -- singers, aerialists, and sword swallowers were the most notable -- might have been friends and neighbors to subscribers of the newspaper.
"Canton has been noted for many years as a good place for amateurs to start from to enter professional circus and vaudeville work," recalled the article, which carried the headline "Circus Colony Starts Exodus To Prepare For New Season."
"Most of the players will practice in other cities this season, but several new acts are being originated in this city to be booked by large agencies within a few weeks."
The thrill of entertaining thousands from circus rings and vaudeville stages awaited the Stark County performers. Some even found a little fame and fortune along the way.
First and foremost
The initial departure usually was made by the city's main circus man, according to the article. As was his habit, he already had run away to the circus by the time the 1917 article appeared in the newspaper.
"The first to leave the city to start practice was Frank Shive ... who left the latter part of last week for Bloomington, Ill., where he will start practice for a new aerial act," said the 1917 article. "He will manage the act this season and it will be the feature of the Golmar Brothers' circus. Shive has been in circus work, similar to the work which he will do this season, for a number of years."
According to an entry in "Circus Scrapbook," maintained by the Circus Historical Society at www.circushistory.org, "Frank Shive was an aerialist and a good one."
"He patiently taught his work to his new wife and Charlotte was soon 'flying,' swinging from a trapeze to her husband, who caught her, and back to the trapeze again," said the posting. "She was particularly adept and was soon an important element of the act."
A posting at www.worthpoint.com made in January 2010 by Larry Kellogg, who knew Shive's spouse later in her life, recalled how the husband and wife team came together.
"When she was a young nursing student in New York City in 1917, Charlotte quit school and ran away to join Barnum & Bailey Circus. This was before the show was combined with Ringling Brothers," wrote Kellogg in his posting. "She soon met and married aerialist Frank Shive, but in the late 1920s he died after battling pneumonia."
Others With Golmar
The Repository's article noted a number of other Canton-area performers who traveled with the Golmar Brothers Circus.
"Steven Cross, of this city, will be the 'boss of props,' that is, he will have charge of seeing that all apparatus needed in the different acts are up in place in the proper time and correctly," the article reported. "Harry Tritch and William Miller will be clowns this season as they have been for a number of years. Mr. and Mrs. William Loos ... better known to the show world as Loos and Loos, will have an aerial act with several new added features."
The article said that all would be traveling with the Golmar circus and they were set to leave the city by late March or early April. The show would open April 7, 1917, at Peoli, Kan., the story said.
When it did, Homer Sheridan of Canton would be taking tickets from circus audience members.
There would be several Stark County residents performing in circuses that were known by names that would be better remembered by history.
"Charles Secrist, who has a large flying troupe which was with Barnum and Bailey last year and who is now wintering in South America where he is playing in all the large cities, will return to this country in time to join the Barnum and Bailey shows," the 1917 Repository article reported.
Biggest name
By far the most widely-known act in the circus business, as far as Canton performers are concerned, were the Cliffords.
"Mr. and Mrs. Carl Bowers, better known as the 'Cliffords,' will be with the Barnum and Bailey circus again this season," the 1917 Repository article told its readers.
"They are sword swallowers," the article simply stated.
Actually, it turns out that Carl Bower was known mostly as an aerialist. His wife, Edith, was the lauded swallower of swords.
And, a discrepancy in spelling exists over the couple's last name. It differs between the 1917 article and a story that was published in the Repository in 2010. The latter article referred to a Canton performer named Edith Bauer, who performed under the stage name Edith Clifford. By the time the article was published, her fame had faded.
"Local old-timers from Canton may have crossed paths with her, whose real name was Edith Bauer. She had retired to the city, largely in anonymity, in the 1920s. She and her husband lived on Third Street NE and ran a corner grocery, which bore the Bauer name, on Fifth Street NE," that 2010 article said.
"She died in 1942 and is buried in West Lawn Cemetery."
Edith appears to have been the more noted circus performer of the spouses. According to the 2010 article, she performed a number of feats with a variety of swords.
"Her most amazing feat," the article noted, "was swallowing a nearly 2-foot-long bayonet, fired from a cannon."
Swords sold
At the time the article was published, Clifford's vintage swords had been purchased by Dan Meyer, a sword swallower from Muncie, Ind.
"Meyer already owned a personal collection of 250 swords," said the article, which noted that Meyer had "picked up a handful of swords and a saw from a couple who lived in Canton" about eight years before. "Along with the swords came a ragged photo of a woman named Edith Bauer. The couple told Meyer they had bought them at a garage sale in the 1950s."
In performances that followed his purchase, Meyer swallowed the saw and about 15 swords, most of them once owned and presumably swallowed by Clifford.
The life of Edith Bauer in Canton was not nearly so dramatic as her career in the circus ring, the article noted.
"Edith Clifford’s first husband, Thomas 'The Elastic Stretch Man' Holmes, died in 1912. She married circus trapeze artist Karl Bauer in 1912. They performed together until they retired to his hometown of Canton in 1922," reported the Repository in 2010.
"She lived the last 20 years of her life as a housewife, grandma, business owner, and member of the local women’s Republican club."
Vaudeville Acts
Canton had "several well known troupes on the vaudeville stage in Europe" in 1917, according to the Repository story.
The Vardell Trio -- Robert Prysi, Earl Shipbaugh and Floyd Tanner -- had dissolved their partnership after playing throughout Europe. But Prysi and Shipbaugh had formed a new novelty act. It would begin a month-long booking at a theater in Paris soon after the article was published in the Repository.
Meanwhile, Tanner, the third member of the trio, "had taken another partner and has a new posing and singing act which now is playing in different theatres in England."
"Both troupes have reported much success."
Another trio also was finding favor on vaudeville stages, although it was not for the harmony of their voices.
"Hill, Cherry and Hill, three Canton boys, are the headliners at the Palace Theatre in London at present," said the article. "They have a bicycle act."
Local shows
Final words of the 1917 article indicated the breadth of Stark County residents' influence on the world of entertainment early in the 20th century. The urge to put on a good show was dear to the heart of many local show people.
"Christian Bolus, an old showman, will start a small circus which will play Canton and the neighboring cities during the early spring and then will play at fairs during the rest of the season," said the 1917 article
Bolus was "intending to use as much Canton talent as possible," the newspaper reported, before informing the readers of the circus owner's experience in organizing entertainment events.
"Bolus for a number of years was boss canvas man for the Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill shows."
And another local show would provide entertaining and educational programs that were a step above traditional oddity exhibits and thrill shows of circus companies, promised the 1917 story.
"A deep sea show is being organized in Canton that will show at neighboring cities and at fairs," the story said. "This show will be a new thing in concessions. Specimens of sea fishes and sea life are being secured from all parts of the country."