My Genealogy Hound

SAM R. WELSER, retired, McKeesport, was born in Philadelphia, April 15, 1816, and is of American extraction. When twelve years of age, he joined, as a juggler and tumbler, Raymond & Waring’s circus, with which and other principal shows he traveled in this country until 1848. He then went to South America as clown for the circus of Banks, Archer & Rockwell, returning by way of the West Indies. Archer died at Matanzas, Cuba, May 24, 1850, and the show disbanded in Charleston, S. C, soon afterward. The same year Mr. Welser joined Dan Rice’s show, as clown, traveling with him from July, 1850, until March, 1851. He was afterward engaged with various leading companies until 1864, his last two seasons being with S. O. Wheeler & Co., Boston. In 1860 Mr. Welser was the first and only man to drive four geese hitched to a common tub three feet in diameter down the Monongahela river from Brownsville to McKeesport. In 1854 he came to McKeesport to train horses for Taylor & Wolfs circus, and in 1857 he here married Mrs. Julia Stacy, a widow of means, who died February 7, 1886, leaving our subject all her fortune, which included cash, bank-stock and eight houses on Diamond square and Market street. Mr. Welser retired from the circus-ring in 1864, and has been a resident of McKeesport since 1854. He is a prominent member of the I. O. O. F. and encampment, with which he has been identified thirty years; politically he is a republican.