Reuben French

From the list of elephant persons Family: French

Reuben French
Profession	circus director
Personal details
Born
Dead	1861 in United States
Country	United States

Locations
Title	director 1830-1835
Location	at French, Hobby & Co in United States

Biography details

Reuben French , circus director in United States

dead 1861 in United States .

Records about Reuben French from A History of the Traveling Menagerie at https://classic.circushistory.org/Thayer/Thayer2b.htm
The Grand Caravan of Living Animals was claiming to have twenty animals. This menagerie, the proprietors of which are Unknown to us, was in Michigan and Ontario in 1830. They had an Asiatic lion, a jaguar, two dromedaries and a Dandy Jack, among others. In Detroit, the license was taken out by Reuben French, who was the manager of several menageries in the years to come.

Solely because of their geographical movements, we suspect that this was the same menagerie that we call French, Hobby & Co. in 1834 (41). If that is true, it joined the Zoological Institute in 1835.

Stuart Thayer, A History of the Traveling Menagerie

Records about Reuben French from A History of the Traveling Menagerie at https://classic.circushistory.org/Thayer/Thayer2b.htm
French (d. 1861) first appears in 1830 in Detroit, where he applied for the license for an unidentified animal exhibit. In 1833, in a letter from John Hart Purdy to Isaac Purdy, in Somers, New York, we find that French rented one-quarter of a menagerie and was interested in buying part of it from F. Quick, and had offered $1,000. We do not know which of our menageries Quick and Purdy were operating.

Under the title French, Quick & Co., the caravan paid a $20 license fee in St. Louis in April, 1834. In October, 1834, using the name French, Hobby & Co., they had reached Paris, Tennessee. J. E. M. Hobby was French’s partner by this time. This is our first notice of him; he was active with the Raymond interests as late as 1840. French was one of the signers of the Zoological Institute agreement, the charter of the monopoly. In none of our references before 1835 have we any clue to what animals they might have exhibited.

Stuart Thayer, A History of the Traveling Menagerie

Reference list

References

Koehl, Dan, (2024). director Reuben French in United States. Elephant Encyclopedia, available online retrieved 24 April 2024 at https://www.elephant.se/person.php?id=1590. (archived at the Wayback machine)

Sources used for this article is among others:

Stuart Thayers American Circus Anthology, A History of the Traveling Menagerie, online at https://classic.circushistory.org/Thayer/Thayer2b.htm

Selected publications

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