The Bloomington-Normal circus legacy

"Starting in the 1870s, the barns, icehouses,gymnasiums and empty theaters of central Illinois provided the practice sitesfor aerial performers whose names still command reverence in the annals ofAmerican circus history. Meet Fred Miltimore and the Green Brothers, runawaysfrom the Fourth Ward School who became the first Bloomington-born flyers. WatchArt Concello, a ten-year-old truant, become first a world-class flyer, then afamous trapeze impresario and finally Ringling Brothers and Barnum and BaileyCircus's most successful general manager. The entire art of the trapeze--instruction,training, performance and management--became a Bloomington-Normal industryduring the tented shows' golden age, when finding a circus flying act without aconnection to this area would have been virtually impossible"-- "Describes the prominent role Bloomington-Normal played in developing aerial artists for the nineteenth- and twentieth-century circus"--