1840s Elephant Trainer and Witness to 1864 Cheyenne Massacre…

…THE STORY OF B.F. THOMAS. Benjamin Franklin Thomas was a quiet man, born in Pennsylvania Quaker country in 1820. He became an elephant trainer for the famous Van Amburgh Circus in the 1840s, then married a young Quaker girl named Ann Elmira Dickenson, soon after starting a Prairie Schooner rest stop on the Nebraska Overland Trail in 1862. Soon, they would be witness to a hair-raising Native American massacre.

Isaac Van Amburgh was the first to merge wild-animal menageries with circuses. He often involved these animals in historic dramas. B.F. Thomas was the primary caretaker of Old Hannibal, the elephant.

I heard some of these stories from Grandpa and his cousin Hazel in the early 80s (they were Nebraska people, then in their 90s). They said that “Hazel’s grandparents were circus people, and they saw the Plum Creek Massacre”. Only now have I fully researched this and realized the magnitude of this early American tale. The main character, Benjamin Franklin Thomas, somehow participated in a kind of whirlwind of American adventure: First, a trainer for one of the first travelling wild-animal exhibitions and Second, manager of a Pony Express station and witness to a Cheyenne massacre. His wife Elmira seemed as adventurous as her husband (Possibly also a member of Van Amburgh Circus, though not confirmed).

The Van Amburgh Circus: Isaac Van Amburgh (1808–1865) was an animal trainer who developed the first trained wild-animal act in modern times. He successfully combined menageries (trained wild animals for…