Circus Midgets Major Noble George Washington Winner & Wife Cabinet Card 1898

Description: Major Noble George Washington Winner and his wife, Mary Jane Gongawar Winner. Photo made circa 1898 by Frank Wendt as part of a series of promotional photos for the Winners, who worked for Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus, and J. H. LaPearl's Great Railroad Show. They also made promotional appearances on their own across the country. The Winners billed themselves as the "World’s Greatest Midgets". Back before everyone had their own cameras, people would go to a studio photographer to have their portraits made on a "cabinet card" like this one, an albumin print mounted on a heavy card measuring 4¼ by 6½ inches. It is marked "Ivory Process" for the burnishing method. It is probably a copy print, like most of the cabinet cards of this image, and is a pretty high quality one. Photographer Frank Wendt was the student of "sideshow freak" photographer Charles Eisenmann. Wendt took over the Eisenmann studio on the Bowery in 1893 and ran it for five years before moving it to Boonton, New Jersey. Major Winner was born in LaMotte, Iowa, in 1869. He joined the Barnum & Bailey Circus at the age of 18 and performed with them at least until 1891. Mrs. Winner was born in 1878 in Letonia, Ohio. According to her great-niece, she and her sister were "farmed out" to family friends in Mason, Michigan in 1881 after their mother's death. In 1896, Major N.G.W. Winner, appearing with the John Robinson & Franklin Bros. Circus in Jackson, Michigan, announced that he was interested in getting married. Someone in the audience told him that she knew of a "little" lady in Mason, Michigan. They met, had a short courtship and were publically married the same year in Mason. Mary was 18 and Noble was 25. They lived in Monticello, Iowa. Both came from families of average-sized people and blamed their small size on childhood illnesses. Wrote the Lima Times Democrat in 1902, "...this little man left the impression that he had profited in more ways than one through his travels, and mingling with people of all classes. He is a splendid judge of character and reads faces like an open book, but experience has taught him to pass by the frequent thoughtless remarks which greet his ears as the crowds come and go. His reply to a fashionably dressed lady who aimed a remark at him in regard to what the Major smilingly terms his homeliness, would have done credit to a courtly wit, and the lady had enough good sense left to offer an abject apology. Mrs. Winner remarked that it was a long time before she got used to being gazed on as a curiosity, but she now rather enjoys meeting the people and seeing the sights which their travel permits." Mrs. Winner suffered from chronic health problems; her appearance in photographs is consistent with tuberculosis. In 1925, she died while on a circus engagement in Seattle. Major Winner grew increasingly despondent after losing his companion of nearly thirty years. Three years later, he drowned himself in the bathtub of his San Francisco home.

Price: 130 USD

Location: Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire

End Time: 2024-12-23T16:47:41.000Z

Shipping Cost: 11 USD