John Bill Ricketts
John Bill Ricketts (died 1799), an Englishman who brought the first modern circus to the United States, began his theatrical career with Hughes Royal Circus in London in the 1780s, and came over from England in 1792 to establish his first circus in Philadelphia.
He built a circus building in Philadelphia in the fall of 1792 in which he conducted a riding school. After training a group of Pennsylvania horses, on April 3, 1793 he gave America's first complete circus performance, which began a series of exhibitions two and three times a week.[1]
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[edit] Gilbert Stuart portrait
At present there is some debate as to the identity of the sitter for one of Gilbert Stuart's unfinished portraits. In 1878 the portrait of "John Bill Ricketts" was identified by George Washington Riggs, (also known as "The President's Banker"), a trustee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as "Breschard, the Circus Rider" and as ""Breschard" the painting was displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1880.
However, in 1970 the National Gallery of Art changed the identification from "Breschard" " to "Ricketts" and to this day the NGA has failed to explain the reason for this identity change
[edit] In popular culture
He was mentioned as the founder of the first Circus in America in the 2010 episode Metamorphosis of the CBS police procedural series Cold Case. The Ringmaster of the fictional Jones Bros. Circus Biggie Jones, invoked his name as the managing corporation out of Florida of the circus "J.B. Ricketts Investments" as part of a coverup of a 1971 murder of a performer. Detective Kat Miller discovered that there was no Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) record as the company being the managing holder or even existing and the suspect, Biggie Jones, got Ricketts's name out of Wikipedia. Det. Miller stated that Ricketts died in 1799.
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