Appaloosa Radio Offers
The Day They Hanged an Elephant
Story by Joan Vannorsdall Schroeder
published in the May-June 1997 issue of the Blue Ridge Country magazine
available online at: blueridgecountry.com/archive
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Featuring the Ballad --
Mary the Elephant
Performed by Chuck Brodsky
From his album Tulips for Lunch
Available through YouTube and Spotify
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Using original source material drawn from the Archives of Appalachia (housed at East Tennessee State University), Joan Vannorsdall Schroeder tells the story of Mary the Elephant who was hung for “murder” in the Clinchfield Railroad Yards in Erwin, Tennessee during September 1916.
Mary was the star of a two-bit traveling circus that toured the reconstruction-era South. Charlie Sparks, the owner of Sparks World Famous Shows, claimed that Mary the Elephant was "the largest living land animal on earth,” three inches bigger than Jumbo, P.T. Barnum's famous pachyderm. At 30 years old, Mary was five tons of pure talent. She could "play 25 tunes on the musical horns without missing a note.” She was also the pitcher on the circus’ baseball-game gag routine.
Mary was Charlie Sparks' favorite, his cash cow, his claim to circus fame. She was the leader of his small band of elephants, an exotic crowd-pleaser, an unpredictable giant.
In addition to her circus tricks, Mary was the dominant female of the show’s elephant herd.
Rumor and exaggeration swarmed about Mary like flies. She was worth a small fortune: $20,000, Charlie Sparks claimed. She was dangerous, having killed two men, or was it eight, or 18?
On Monday, September 11, 1916, the Sparks World Famous Shows played St. Paul, Virginia, a tiny mining town in the Clinch River Valley, where drifter Red Eldridge made a fatal decision. Slight and flame-haired, Red had nothing to lose by signing up with Sparks World Famous Shows; he'd dropped into St. Paul from a Norfolk and Western boxcar and decided to stay for a while. Taking a job as janitor at the Riverside Hotel, Eldridge found himself pushing a broom, and, then, dreaming of moving on.
Eldridge was hired as an elephant handler and marched in the circus parade that afternoon. It's easy to imagine that what he lacked in skill and knowledge, he made up for with go-for-broke bravado. A small man carrying a big stick can be a dangerous thing.
No one denies that Mary killed Red Eldridge in Kingsport, Tennessee on September 12, 1916.
The details of why and how it happened vary widely.
This is a gripping story that tells more about people and the time than about elephants.
