Ringling Family of Baraboo

Al. Ringling 1852 - 1916

Della Ringing 1869 - 1931

Lou Ringling 1851 - 1941

Al. Ringling

Born -  December 13, 1852, Chicago, Illinois

Died – January 1, 1916, Baraboo, Wisconsin

Although the Ringling Brothers Circus was owned and managed by a band of brothers, the empire was led by the oldest of the seven boys born to August and Salome Ringling. Born in December of 1852, Al. Ringling’s parents were both immigrants to America, his father coming from Germany and his mother, whose maiden name was Juliar, from the Alsace region of France. They were married in Milwaukee before moving to Chicago where their first child, Albert Karl August was born. Ten more children would follow, seven of whom would live to adulthood, six boys and one girl.  

The family moved to Baraboo in 1855 when Al. was two and half years old and his father set up a harness shop here. As soon as Al. was old enough to help, August taught him the trade. It wasn’t too long however before August Ringling’s wanderlust led the family to move again in 1860, this time to McGregor, Iowa where Al. spent the rest of his childhood years. It was in McGregor that Al. and his brothers went to circus shows that traveled along the Mississippi River by boat, and the desire to work in the circus trade was born, especially in Al. Ringling.

By 1872 Al. Ringling was out on his own as a carriage trimmer doing things like leatherwork and upholstery to outfit carriages. On the side Al. taught himself performance skills such as juggling, balancing and plate spinning. He also worked on his skills training dogs and horses. By 1877 he had joined a stage show and for the next several years worked on a variety of traveling shows. Al. often returned to his parents’ home which by 1875 was back in Baraboo. It was here in 1882 that Al. set out with two if his brothers on their first joint effort, a hall show entitled Ringling Brothers’ Classic & Comic Concert Company. The following year Al. Ringling married his sweetheart Eliza “Lou” Morris who had also formerly lived in McGregor. When five of the Ringling brothers held their first circus performance in Baraboo in 1884, Al. was the only one married and his wife Lou became an essential part of the new circus. Despite hardships and setbacks, the circus grew steadily but was limited in range because it traveled by horse and wagon. In 1890 the Ringling Brothers Circus became a railroad show which made transportation much easier and helped expand the reach of the circus. In 1907 the Ringling Brothers purchased their largest competitor, the Barnum & Bailey Circus, which they operated separately from their own circus until 1918 when they combined both operations.

By the turn of the 20th century the Ringling brothers were some of the richest men in Sauk County. Several of the brothers built large homes in Baraboo, with Al. Ringling’s being the largest ever built in Sauk County at fourteen times the cost of the average home. In 1912 he announced that he would build a new theatre for Baraboo after a fire had destroyed Baraboo’s only opera house some years earlier. Three years later the Al. Ringling Theatre was built at a cost of $100,000. The theatre would be his final project and a gift to the community. He died on January 1, 1916 just six weeks after the theatre opened.

The Ringling Brothers Circus left Baraboo for good in the spring of 1918. Al. Ringling had been the major anchor in keeping the circus winter quarters here. The circus continued for the next 99 year under different ownership eventually closing for good in 2017. The legacy of Al. Ringling and the circus can still be seen and felt in places like the winter quarters which are now a part of Circus World Museum, the Al. Ringling Mansion and the Al. Ringling Theatre.

Did you know?

Ringling is the Americanized version of the original family name -  Rüngeling

“Al.” always has a period after his name (as did his brother Alf. T. Ringling)

Della Ringling

Born - 1869 Garnett, Kansas

Died - 1931

Della Andrews was born in Garnett, Kansas in 1869 as the second child to William and Rebecca Andrews.  The family moved to Baraboo when Della was young and it was there that she got to know the Ringling boys who started a circus when she was 15 years old.  In 1890 she married Alfred “Alf.” T. Ringling and began a life with him traveling with the circus which fortunately had become a railroad show that year making travel easier than with horse and wagons. When Alf. T. and Della were married the circus consisted of about 225 employees, 18 railroad cars and a big top that was 225 feet long. After losing two children in infancy Della Ringling gave birth in 1895 to their third child, Richard Theodore Ringling, who fortunately survived.

Each year as the circus returned to Baraboo Alf. T. and Della would rent quarters for the winter. By 1899 four of the Ringling brothers were married and growing families brought about the need for permanent houses. Alf. T. and Della decided to build in the summer of 1899 at the corner of Oak and Tenth streets. Now with the means to be ostentatious the Ringlings hired Minneapolis architect Fred Kees to design the biggest and most expensive house Baraboo had seen up to that point. The Neoclassical-style house was 40 by 65 feet with rooms for entertaining and even a pipe organ. The interiors were lavishly decorated with mahogany woodwork in many rooms. Bathrooms were outfitted with costly decorative tiles.

Alf. T. and more importantly, Della, now had a permanent home to raise and dote on their one surviving child. Della could also now entertain in style. In 1904 she hosted the largest tea party ever held in Baraboo. One hundred and fifty women came to the house and enjoyed tea and three courses of refreshments to the soft strains of the pipe organ. As she grew closer and closer to Baraboo her relationship with Alf. T. grew apart. Della did not wish to travel with the circus much and Alf. T. incessantly poured himself into his work. In 1913 things came to a head when Della sued for divorce on the grounds of desertion and cruel treatment.  The divorce settlement gave Della the house and several other Baraboo properties and $305,000 in securities to be held in a trust. The income produced was to be given to Della as long as she lived. After the divorce Della converted to Catholicism and became an ardent supporter of St. Joseph’s Church and its work under its new priest, Father E. C. O’Reilly.

By 1920 Della felt the need to move from Baraboo and decided to donate her house for use as a hospital to be run by the Sisters of St. Mary. The hospital opened in 1922 with 25 beds and much of its original interior finishes intact. The house received additions over the next three decades and St. Mary’s Ringling Hospital continued to thrive after Della’s death in 1931.  By the late 1950s however the original house portion of the hospital was deemed unsafe and a new hospital was planned in a different part of Baraboo. When the new St. Clare Hospital opened in 1963, the old hospital became a nursing home and later a retirement home for nuns. The house was torn down in 1977 but the legacy of modern health care Della started lives on in Baraboo.

Lou Ringling

Born -  May, 1851 Springhill Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania.

Died – October 14, 1941, Baraboo, Wisconsin

Eliza Morris, Louisa Morris, Louisa Redding, Eliza Ringling, and Lou Ringling are all names for the same fascinating woman that is shrouded in more mystery and legend than any of her famous Ringling brothers-in-law. Eliza Morris was born on or around May 12, 1851 at or near Morris Crossroads, Fayette County, Pennsylvania as the last of several children to John and Christiana Morris. When Eliza was about 18 months old the family packed up and moved to northeastern Iowa where her father John purchased a farm in Allamakee County. This is where Eliza Morris spent the formative years of her life. When she was about 12 years old her father sold the farm and bought a hotel in McGregor, Iowa.

Eliza spent her early teen years helping her mother and father run the establishment. When she was 16 she ran off on a summer evening to elope with a young man named Jefferson Redding. She and Redding were married on July 27, 1867 in Prairie du Chien and she gave her name as Louisa Morris. For much of her life she would often go by “Lou.”  The newlywed couple lived at the hotel and helped run the establishment especially after Lou’s mother died in 1870. Her father John only lived a few more years himself, passing away in 1873.

The next period of Lou’s life is one shrouded in perhaps the most mystery. It is unknown what happened to her first husband, Jefferson Redding. It is likely that she had up to three children with him, all of whom died at some point, and Jefferson disappeared from her life. Neither Jefferson or Louisa Redding or any of their children have been found in the 1880 federal census. By the early 1880s Lou moved to Baraboo where one of her sisters lived and she began work as a seamstress. The Ringling family was also living there at that time and Lou eventually met Al. Ringling at a dance. Of course she most likely already knew him because the Ringlings had lived in McGregor, Iowa at the same time.

No official record for Al. and Lou’s marriage has yet to be found. They were allegedly married on December 19, 1883 and just four months later Al. Ringling started the circus with his brothers. Al. Ringling was the only one who was married at the time and his wife Lou did as much as for the circus as any of Al.’s brothers.  In the early years Lou managed and made wardrobe, was an equestrienne, a snake charmer and even a teamster when needed.

The Ringling Brothers Circus switched to a railroad show in 1890 and grew steadily. By 1905 the employed over 1,000 people and the show traveled with 85 railroad cars.  As the circus grew so did the wealth of the Ringling family. In 1905, Al. and Lou began the construction of the largest house ever built in Sauk County although one of their favorite spots was their cottage on Mirror Lake. Ten years later Al. Ringling paid for the construction of the theatre in downtown Baraboo that still bears his name. When he died in 1916 he left Lou with a cash sum of $325,000 and several pieces of real estate. Lou then poured her efforts into developing the property at Mirror Lake building rental cottages and a dance pavilion. In 1919 at the age of 68 Lou purchased land at the east end of Mirror Lake and began the construction of a three story hotel that was the largest and most modern in the area. She named the Morris Hotel after her family.

In the 1920s Lou became the principal investor in a country club development in Crystal Lake, Illinois. The project converted an estate there into a modern country club and golf course with residential lots. The project however went into receivership after the stock market crashed in 1929 and Lou lost most of her fortune. The hotel on Mirror Lake burned down in 1932. Lou was living at the hotel at the time even though she had sold it nine years earlier. After this she lived out her remaining years in a house she owned in Baraboo on Ash Street. She died there in 1941 having outlived her husband by 25 years.