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.