Run Away to Join the Circus

In the early 1900s, young men sometimes wanted to get out of their boring hometowns and out from under their parents' thumbs. The flashy lights, roar of the animals and the big top tents often seemed to call to them offering a more exciting life. Countless teens ran off and joined the circus, some made a career out of it, some came crawling back home to their parents never wanting to leave again. Others, like the two boys discussed in this episode had their lives changed forever. 

Learn about Sheridan Justus and Ross Habernick and their brief times with the Ringling Bros. Circus caravan. 

An unbelievable true story pulled from newspaper headlines in 1910 and 1911. 

Transcript

As I enter year five of the podcast, I’ve been thinking alot about how fun it’s been to bring you these stories over the years. I look back at the episodes and realize how all over the place each subject is. I don’t remember what I wanted out of this when I started, I just knew that I liked learning. Instead of finding a niche and sticking with it, I bounce around from idea to idea, it’s just how my brain works. Perhaps finding a topic and sticking with it would have been better for gaining traction in the sea of podcasts out there, but I can’t be that person. 

I see something that sparks my interest and I run with it, until it’s completed or until I find something more interesting. I love history. I love true crime. I love a good mystery. I love the unexplainable. So what you get from this podcast is a representation of the way I process information and what I do with said information. 

My interest of late has been to dig through old newspapers and find stories that haven’t been touched on much or at all. From there, I take that one article and see how far I can go with it. I build family trees on ancestry.com, I scour digital information from local museums and I go through and find as many articles as I can about the subject. Sometimes I take hours of my life to do this and wind up with nothing to show for it. 

Other times, I follow the twists and turns until I reach an end that I didn’t see coming. I get to know people that lived over one hundred years ago. I imagine what life must have been like back then and hope that I can deliver a story that you’d otherwise never care about, in a well researched, entertaining way. 

If you’ve been with me since episode 1 when I talked about my ancestors and traditions, thank you. You know who you are. If you joined me during one of my episodes about Arizona, or curses, or suburban murder, or music, thank you. If this is your first time hearing this podcast, welcome. It’ll be a bumpy ride and you may not have wanted to learn about everything I discuss, but hopefully, in the end, you’ll be glad you did. 

Welcome to Year 5 of the Curator 135 Podcast. My name is Nathan Olli and this is Episode 79 - Run Away to Join the Circus  

Sheridan McClellan Justus was born on October 6th, 1893, in Joppa, Tennessee, a rural area near the Clinch Mountains in Grainger County. He was an only child to parents Samuel and Cordie Justus.

The Justus family was well known in the area, with Sheridan’s ancestors being some of the first residents of Joppa. His great-grandfather, John was an educator and the first teacher at the one room schoolhouse.  Sheridan himself would only make it as far as the fourth grade when it came to education.

After the death of his mother, Sheridan and his father packed up and moved to Omaha, Nebraska.

Once in Omaha, Samuel Justus remarried to a woman named Nancy. Soon, in 1906, a baby sister named Eura came along. Three years later, a brother, William, was born.    

While his father worked in bank insurance, Sheridan moved from job to job to help make ends meet. In 1910, at the age of sixteen, the young man became tired of life in Omaha. He needed some adventure. He wanted to see the country. That’s when a family friend jokingly suggested that he join the circus.   

By 1910 the Ringling Bros. traveling Circus had more than 1,000 employees, 335 horses, 26 elephants, 16 camels and other assorted animals that traveled from town to town on 92 railcars. The season’s tour started in April of that year with 20 shows in Chicago before hitting the road. Stops in Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania took them into June. The circus then traveled northeast to New York before returning to the midwest with shows in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. By early July they’d reached the Dakotas and were heading towards Iowa and Nebraska.

Up until that point, the tour had been marred by various events, circus life wasn’t for the weak. In Danville, Illinois, eight elephants broke loose for several hours. There was damage to several homes and gardens in the area.

The Ringling Bros. shows were notorious for the thievery that took place while residents were busy at the parades and shows. Whether it was circus staff or drifters looking for opportunity, reports of thefts and break-ins were rampant in each city that hosted the circus. 

Many crew members often became intoxicated in the evening and fights were frequent between the different groups. One report from Pennsylvania in June had the camel men fighting against the elephant men, using tent stakes and elephant hooks as weapons. 

By the middle of June there were reports of an excited onlooker being pushed beneath a train car and losing a foot, show horses dying from the heat and more reports of robberies leading up to, and following, circus stops.

On July 5th, during a show in the aptly named Watertown, South Dakota, a massive storm passed through town that tore down the big tent, nearly trapping the audience inside. Luckily for them, the crew were able to move them to safety before it collapsed. One crew member died and the ensuing fire was put out by the torrents of rain. 

Sheridan Justus was looking for excitement and it was probable, as the family friend had suggested, that he would find it by joining the circus.  

On July 12th, after witnessing the wonder of the Ringling Bros. circus in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, Sheridan hopped aboard one of the train cars and joined the circus. Over the course of the next month he worked odd jobs with the circus as they traveled through Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and back through Illinois. He was making a steady paycheck but the work was hard and sometimes dangerous. Plus he’d had any personal belongings, including his clothing, stolen from him early on. 

As the Ringling Bros. caravan traveled on they made a stop in Galesburg and then arrived at their August 11th location, Sterling, Illinois. There, they would bring on a new young worker, around Sheridan’s age, named Ross Habernick. 

Ross lived with his mother and siblings in a small home in nearby Dixon. He’d just attempted to join the Navy but failed the entrance exam. He was feeling down and needed to get away from home for a while. As Sheridan had done, like countless others had done that year alone, he decided to hitch a ride with Ringling Bros..

After one more Illinois show, the caravan headed north to Wisconsin. Habernick worked at numerous shows in the Badger State, as they made their way up the coast of Lake Michigan. 

On August 16th, as workers were hoisting the tents in the city of Oshkosh, the newspaper in nearby Wausau braced its readers for the upcoming arrival of the Ringling Bros. Circus. 

Wausau Pilot

Wausau, Wisconsin - Tue, Aug 16, 1910

“A WARNING.” 

Ringling Bros.' circus will show here next Saturday. This show, like every other, is followed or rather preceded by a band of crooks. Despite the efforts of the management to rid the circus organization of such vermin. These crooks usually work in a town on a night, previous and during the time of the parade.

They leave a town shortly after the parade (as soon as they can and go on to the next town, where, if they get a chance to break into a few houses before the arrival of the circus, they avail themselves of the opportunity. As a rule most of them are dangerous crooks, who carry weapons which they will use if cornered. It is expected that some of this gentry will arrive in this city next Friday night, and work. Every citizen should lock his doors and windows that night and the following, and have his old derringer where he can reach it handily, if needed. For an absent minded man we would advise that he hide his money in the kitchen range and not tell the cook about it.

You know cooks can't keep secrets. The chief of police will swear in a number of men to act as special police. Tom has been making a collection of pepper box tin stars, so will have enough to go around. These men will protect the citizens from the pickpocket. Some people need more protection than others. Some ought to be protected from themselves.

But the Ringling Bros. Circus came and went on the 20th and as far as the newspapers could ascertain, the city of Wausau saw no signs of robbery or other incidents. That is, until early in the morning on the 21st. 

Around 3:00 am, as the caravan was well on its way to its last Wisconsin stop in La Crosse, workers aboard a St. Paul train spotted a body along the tracks near Mosinee, a tiny town just 15 miles south of Wausau. The body was in pieces, but as far as the workers could tell, it was that of a young man. Both arms and his head were severed from the torso which was horribly mangled itself. 

Assuming it to be a circus worker, word was sent to the Marathon County Coroner, W.C. Dickens. He arrived later that morning and surveyed the scene, quickly ruling the death an accident. There would be no need for an inquest. All that was found on the young man was a pipe and a bottle of booze. He agreed that it was nothing more than a circus worker who became drunk and fell between railroad cars. He ordered that the body be sent to the undertaker in Mosinee, John A. Wagner, where he could give the man a proper burial in an unmarked grave at the Mosinee burial grounds.  

October rolled around and Samuel P Justus began to grow more worried about his son, Sheridan. After initially being understanding of a young man’s need to get away and spread his wings, he grew more worried with each passing day. He’d been gone over three months and the family hadn’t received one letter or message from the now 17-year-old Sheridan.

For business related reasons, Samuel and his wife and kids had moved from Omaha, Nebraska to their new home in St. Joseph, Missouri during this period. Sheridan had been aware of the upcoming move. 

Samuel took to the streets first in an attempt to locate Sheridan, passing out flyers with his son’s information. On October 25th, an old neighbor in Omaha got in contact with him to let him know that he’d seen Sheridan on the day the circus was in town; he appeared to be working with the crew. With that information, the nervous father contacted the circus and began to search the areas that the caravan had been since it left Omaha. 

November and December came and went with no news of what had happened to Sheridan Justus. Samuel’s next step was to circulate information to the various fraternal organizations he belonged to. One of those organizations was the "Knights and Ladies of Security", an organization founded in Topeka, Kansas in 1892, which later changed its name to "Security Benefit Association" and eventually became known as "Security Benefit Life Insurance Company". The KALS was the precursor to the modern-day Security Benefit insurance company, providing life insurance and other benefits to its members. They ran a story in their January 10th, 1911 issue. 

Knights and Ladies of Security

Topeka, Kansas • Tue, Jan 10, 1911

"MISSING." 

Sheridan McClellan Justus, originally from Omaha, Neb., left his home July 8th, 1910, with Ringling Brothers' circus. Seventeen years old October, 1910. Looks about 16-years-old, 130 pounds, about 5 feet 6 inches high, large blue eyes, medium fair complexion, light brown or sandy hair, parted in middle; front teeth beginning to decay, one upper tooth on right side grown out and appears like a tusk (caused by baby tooth not being removed in time); has small ears, which stand close to head and bulge out in the center; has large scar on inside of leg, just above knee, one knee cap has small scar caused from a thorn; has large, full nose, which appears a little bit red on end; two small scars on neck, near throat, caused from surgeon's knife in an operation when a small boy. May have other small scars on face and hands. I think the joint of one finger is slightly enlarged.

Wears size 8 shoe, 7 and 1/8 hat; has small mouth, high forehead, a very honest and sincere expression, especially when talking; may change his name. All members of the K. and L. of S. are respectfully requested to do a fraternal deed for a brother in need. Address all information: S. P. Justus, R. 307, German-American Bank building, St. Joseph, Mo..

A few days later, a woman named Lizzie Drake, from Mosinee was reading the January 10th issue of the Knights and Ladies of Security paper when she realized that the boy in the missing article sounded a lot like the young man who’d been run over by the Ringling Bros. train back in August. She gathered a pen and paper and wrote to Samuel Justus.

The father was grief stricken, on one hand relieved to have some closure to the situation, but devastated that he’d have to bring Sheridan home in a coffin. In mid February, he set off for Mosinee, Wisconsin, nearly 600 miles away.

Upon arriving in Mosinee, Samuel contacted Undertaker Wagner and requested to have the casket exhumed. While watching Mr. Wagner work, he found it peculiar how close to the surface the coffin had been buried. The depth of the casket was closer to two feet than the required six feet. He was also taken aback by the crude craftsmanship that had gone into the box. His son was no pauper, but had been treated as such.

Things would only get worse. After Wagner warned Samuel of the body's condition he removed the lid of the coffin.

The body inside lay twisted and decomposed. One arm and one leg lay separately at the foot of the coffin and the young man’s severed head was tied up in a burlap gunny sack. He could smell the chloride of lime that had been thrown into the casket to help hasten the decomposition process.

Still, he was able to observe enough of the body, hair, teeth, and an indent in the forehead, that he was convinced that he’d found his son. The clothing he was wearing also looked familiar. 

Samuel Justus and the other men witnessing the disinterment immediately had John Wagner arrested. The charges against him were burying a body without the proper permit, among other issues related to the care and burial of the body. After a quick trial Wagner was found guilty and ordered to pay thirty dollars and any costs incurred by Samuel Justus, including the new metallic casket Justus ordered for his son. The Wausau paper was quoted as saying that Wagner had treated the body no differently than the burying of a pig. 

Samuel Justus brought the body back to St. Joseph, Missouri. His intentions were to take the casket to Joppa, Tennessee so that he could bury his son next to his first wife, the boy's mother. His current wife, however, had fallen ill so those plans were delayed. The casket was stored at the receiving vault at Ashland Cemetery.

The Justus family was paid $240 from Sheridan’s life insurance policy. In the following days Samuel Justus got back to work. 

He arrived at his office in the morning and went about tackling his first order of business, going through his mail that had accumulated during his trip to Wisconsin. He sat down, picked up the pile of letters and then sat back in his chair, pale and gasping.  Staring up at him from the top of the pile of unopened letters, was one written in his son’s handwriting. The date stamped on the envelope was March 2nd, nearly the same day Samuel had his son’s body exhumed in Mosinee. The return address was marked as being from Persia, Tennessee. 

With shaking hands he opened the letter and read that his son was doing fine but was tired and wanted to come home. He composed himself as best he could and rushed to the telegraph office and wired the sheriff at Persia, Tenn., asking if Sheridan M. Justus was working there. The following night the sheriff replied that he was indeed in Persia. The young Mr. Justus was not only alive but had even just finished up a court case where he was one of the state witnesses in a murder trial. 

Samuel returned a letter to the sheriff giving the location of several scars and a birthmark to ensure it was him. He also wrote to his son. 

The next day he got a letter back from Sheridan, assuring his father that he was alive and declaring that he’d be back in a few days. He recited the story of his wanderings since the day he’d ran away to join the circus back in July.  

At the Ringling Bros. Macomb, Illinois stop on August 9th, 1910, he decided that he’d had enough of the circus life and called it quits. He hitched a ride nearly 250 miles northeast to Chicago. There, he was shipped out with a gang of laborers to Michigan, where he worked for two weeks with a crew on the Northwestern railway. From there he went to South Bend, Indiana, then to Birmingham, Alabama, before finally ending up with a railway job in Persia. He declared that the wanderlust had left him, and that his only desire was to return home and that he would have done so before had he not lost his wallet and clothing. 

Samuel Justus quickly wrote to the authorities in Mosinee and Wausau, Wisconsin, explaining what had happened and inquired as to what should happen with the body now.  

He promptly returned the life insurance money and was quoted in the local papers after being asked about taking the money.

“It was the only thing I could do under the circumstances. God only knows what I have suffered. For a time I did not worry about the boy. I wanted him home but thought he would come of his own accord. When I became assured at Mosinee that the boy was mine and during all of the recital of the burial of the body and the trial of the undertaker it was all I could do to keep up. It has been an expensive ordeal. I have spent a great deal of money and I have lost many pounds of flesh and many hours of sleep, but all that does not matter now. My boy is alive and he is coming home."

It took Sheridan Justus long enough to get home that his family began to fear the worst again, but finally, on the afternoon of March 28th, 1911, the boy ascended the steps leading to his family’s home on Messanie Street. A small group of reporters waited nearby. 

He knocked on the front door, “Is Mr. Justus In?" 

His father came to the door and looked over the young man standing on his porch. His child looked more grown up and worse for wear, but it was him. “Why son, where have you been?”  

Sheridan responded, "There will be no more wandering for me." 

"Why haven't you written to us during your long absence?" asked his father. "Don't you know that we have been greatly worried. Until you wrote me a letter from Tennessee we thought that you had been killed at Mosinee, Wisconsin. I even identified your body. I went to Mosinee and brought the body to St. Joseph, believing it to be that of my boy. I intend to find out whose it is."

Sheridan hung his head. "I don't know why I didn't write." 

"Who enticed you away from home to join Ringling Brothers' circus?" Mr. Justus asked. 

“Thompson.” 

“I knew it.”

Samuel Justus turned to the reporters as he ushered his son inside. He declared that he was heading to Omaha in a few days to proceed criminally against Ringling Brothers for hiring a minor without the consent of his parents. While also paying a visit to “Thompson.” 

Sheridan was home safe and sound, but the question remained, who was the young man crushed by the Ringling Bros. train in Mosinee, Wisconsin. The same young man whose body now lay in a vault within the Ashland Cemetery in St. Joseph, Missouri.

"I Intend to reply to every letter that I receive for Information about the boy who is lying in the vault," said Mr. Justus. "I received a letter from a Mrs. Habernick of Dixon, Illinois, concerning the body. She said that her boy left home last summer and joined a circus, and has never returned."

Ross Habernick, it turned out, joined the Ringling Bros. circus, two days after Sheridan Justus had left for Chicago. It’s assumed that Ross was placed in the position or positions vacated by Sheridan’s departure. It was also believed that Ross may have been the recipient of Sheridan’s stolen clothing. 

In the days that followed Sheridan’s return, his father Samuel corresponded with Mrs. Habernick in Dixon, Illinois. 

“Dear Madam,

The body of the boy I examined at Masinee and brought here for burial was so badly decomposed that I had absolutely nothing to go by except his hair, his clothing and teeth and all I know otherwise about the boy was from information given me by the city authorities of Masinee, Wisconsin. They said the boy would have weighed from 140 to 150 pounds, about five feet, six or seven inches tall, fair complexion, large blue eyes, large head, small ears, 17 or 18 years old, large nose, front tooth decay, number eight tan shoe, light brown or sandy hair, small hands, had never done any very heavy work, appeared to be a boy of good family.” 

Mrs. Habernick then contacted her son’s dentist who was able to send Ross’s dental records to Samuel Justus. Justus then received a letter from a young man who bunked with Habernick on the circus train and mentioned a bent toe he’d noticed on the lad in the short time they’d been together. With the new information, he was able to return to Ashland Cemetery, open the casket and confirm the details. The boy in the box was actually Ross Habernick. 

By May of that year, Ross Habernick was moved to the Habernick family plot at the Dixon cemetery and given a proper burial. Some, including Samuel Justus, believed that Habernick’s death may have been the result of foul play. His mother spoke to a reporter and explained what she believed happened. 

“Ross was in the habit of walking in his sleep. And up until a few months before he left home we experienced difficulty in keeping him in bed. Company could be visiting in the parlor and Ross would appear and walk through the room and could be led back to bed without his knowing a thing about it.”

She believed that being tired and unused to sleeping on the train made it possible that he arose from his bed and walked to the platform of the car. If no one happened to notice him he could easily have stepped off the platform and fallen under the wheels.

This story filled various newspapers with headlines for nearly a year and then just sort of vanished from memory. Researching this has made me insanely interested in learning about the lives of the workers involved in traveling circuses. Also, there must be dozens, if not hundreds of other stories out there of folks running away from their lives to join the circus… I get it. 

The father in this story, Samuel Justus, popped up in various other articles, mostly involving lawsuits for the next ten years. He died in 1921 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. Before his death, he and his wife had two more children. One, a girl they interestingly named Mosinee (after the city in Wisconsin). She was born in 1911, perhaps around the same time he went to Mosinee to view the body. Another girl, Gail was born in 1918 giving Sheridan four half-siblings.

Sheridan had a few run-ins with the law in his early years but settled down and married a woman named Ethel May in 1924. Together they had four children, Ruth, Robert, Janice and Dorothy. Sheridan spent the rest of his life in St. Joseph, never leaving again. He worked as a carpenter and passed away in January of 1961. 50 years after he returned home from the circus. He was 67.   

As far as the Habernicks go, finding any information on the mother or siblings of Ross Habernick is nearly impossible, I can’t even locate their graves. Hopefully the mother was able to enjoy some portion of the rest of her life. 

As I mentioned, the amount of stories hidden away out there involving men and women who traveled with these circus caravans, are probably countless. This may not be the last time this podcast touches on a circus related story. 

So here we go, Year Five is underway. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Stop by Curator135.com and leave me a message. I’ll have photos and articles related to this episode on the website soon. 

If you like this podcast and want to be a bigger part of it, consider becoming a patron. Head to patreon.com/curator135 and join Dave, David, Jim, Marie, Laura, Vicki and Chris. There are three tiers of support or you can name your own donation. Thank you patrons, I couldn’t do this without you. 

Like, Follow and Subscribe to Curator 135 on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X and Tik Tok.

If you enjoyed this or any of my other podcast episodes, don’t forget to leave a five star review. As always, thank you for listening, and remember,  be good to one another and be creative. The world needs you. 143