14 comments

  1. Escambia County, where I was born!

  2. I was also born in Escambia County, AL … the only hospital that was close to Escambia County, FL (where my parents lived) … my maternal grandparents and my extended family also lived in Atmore. AL …

    1. How fun! My grandparents, aunts, uncles etc lived in Atmore (Heltons, Holmes)! I lived in E Brewton until I was almost 11 and then moved to Valley, AL where I met Debbie Morgan Williams!

  3. Very interesting and I would love to have listened to this man’s past life stories. Sounds so typical Southern to hear all kinds of wonderful experiences. thanks for sharing. Enjoyed it very much.

  4. Dennis Brooks. Check this out. Our folks?

    1. Quit likely. I don’t have a good spread on the Brooks’ in that area, but enough to think we would be related.

    2. I finally read the whole article and two things stand out. One, two of his brothers became judges. Your great-grandfather was clerk to his uncle, the judge, while in Brewton. Two, he moved to Escambia Cty, FL. As I recall, your g-g-grandfather is buried in Pensacola and was living with family when he died there, also, this was where Paw-Paw would visit during hay-fever season.

  5. My Grandmother lived in Bratt, FL and was born and raised in Canoe, AL. Both places are close to where this took place. She would tell us that when she was a child they would watch in the trees for ( and occasionally see) the monkeys that escaped from the circus train. I thought it was just a story to keep us kids quiet and looking for something that never existed, until I read this.

  6. I’m sitting in Venice Beach where all the animals were kept from the circus. Sarasota didn’t have to he space to keep all these beasts

  7. Advertising is putting circus posters all over town. Promotion is having the circus animals parade through town. Publicity is having a train wreck that frees all the circus animals into the town …

  8. I wonder if the big cats that are being seen in the wild are descendants of the two cats that escaped? Several have been reported in NW AL.

  9. The elephants were too heavy to stay in the box cars on the train over the bridge into Venice so they all had to be taken off the train and hand walked across the Venice bridge. All the town folk would come to see them walk the bridge.

  10. Th Ringling mansion in Sarasota is absolutely breathtaking. The amount of money they made from the circus boggles the mind. They have huge blocks of Italian marble making up the back porch if the mansion and grounds that step right down into Sarasota bay.

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