Written By Donna Costa
My search was about to die when I returned to the letter William had penned to his sister in 1890:
“I have come to Chicago again to my old home stead as I like it better here and better business. […] I was sick of New York and could not do business there.” William’s address at 95 W. Madison Street was a short distance away from The London Dime Museum and Theatre at 150 W. Madison. Considered a low rung on the circus-biz ladder, dime museums doubled as year-round performance sites for sideshow attractions, curiosity acts (“freak shows”), acrobats and magicians. Harry Houdini relied on these venues many times in the 1890s. Had William also performed there when he couldn’t find work elsewhere?
William’s letter was written on the New York Clipper letterhead of Mons-Natalie, From the Hippodrome Paris, France. My assumption had been that he had borrowed the Mons-Natalie letterhead from a circus colleague. But maybe not. What if he’d changed his stage name? What if Mons-Natalie, Wm La Main, and William Beilstein were one and the same?
I fired up my search engine.
“Mons,” apparently, was simply an older abbreviation for Monsieur. Donning a French title would have created the illusion of circus grandeur. Natalie’s bio at the Circus Historical Society states that he was born in Turkey, of Grecian heritage, while The Topeka State Journal of Sept. 20, 1902 claimed that he was French. With circuses routinely falsifying bios to add allure and garner publicity, Natalie’s bio didn’t rule out the notion that he was indeed William Beilstein, my German-Canadian great-grandfather from Ontario farm country.
An article in The Pittsburg Dispatch dated October 16, 1889 stated that the well-known equilibrist, Mons-Natalie, was part of the circus at World Museum and had been “a strong card” with Forepaugh’s the previous season. The Great Forepaugh Show—P.T. Barnum’s foremost competitor—had toured Ontario in 1884-1887. If William had seen a circus, it would have been Forepaugh’s, the first to introduce “Wild West” shows. The family lore of William performing with Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill might have been true were it not for the fact that they were with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West—a different show and another fierce competitor of Forepaugh’s.
New searches with Circus World yielded several listings of Mons-Natalie (aka Mons. Natalie) with Ringling Brother’s Circus 1890-1896, with Barnum and Bailey Circus 1898-99, returning to Ringling Bros. from1900-1903, then disappearing from the circus record.
Did the dates align with the personal timeline of William Beilstein?
In April, 1894, William married Adeline Eidt in Wilmot Township (New Hamburg), County of Waterloo. They resided near where William had grown up, in the town of Hanover. If he worked with Ringling 1890-96, William would have had only a few weeks after his April nuptials before the season startup in May.
Over the next several years, the couple produced ten children. With circuses running only six months of the year, that left another six for William to reunite with his wife and family in Ontario and take up an off-season occupation. Before his marriage at age 20, the 1881 Census listed William as a “painter,” the same as his older brother, Henry. The birth registration of William’s daughter Florence in 1898 again lists him as painter. That occupation would suit the circus off-season, allowing him to work odd times, perhaps alongside his brother.
While this revolving lifestyle seemed plausible, it was troubling to picture Adeline left on her own so soon after their vows and again after the death of their firstborn in 1895. She was left alone, first with one child, then two, three, four, as William returned to the circus world. Perhaps Adeline’s dislike of circus stories had less to do with Victorian morality regarding a circus career and more to do with the resentment that comes with solo-parenting half of every year with a growing brood of children.
