Lanterna Rally

Author: Donna Lee Dicksson

Publisher:

Published: 2016-06-09

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 9781621833345

She was a family legend, a nameless woman who had performed in the Barnum & Bailey Circus in London, England in the late 1800's. There was no bible, no record, no remnant of this circus star to remember her by. Family elders said she was an acrobat, a rider of white horses, and an American Indian who had run away from the reservation as a child to join the circus. In reality, she was not an acrobat, a rider of white horses, or Indian. She was the second of the Georgia Wonder girls who came onto the entertainment scene in the early 1880's. After witnessing Lula Hurst on stage in early 1884, Mattie Lee Price was immediately able to duplicate Lulu's mysterious feats of strength. Mattie gave her first appearance at age 14 in front of the most influential men of Cartersville, Georgia. Since Lula Hurst was already making a fortune giving her strong woman act, the men decided to form a stock company that very night and make some money of their own. The new company started touring immediately. Ninety-pound Mattie Lee Price could lift 2 or 3 large men in a chair and twist hickory sticks right out of the hands of the several men that held it. Audiences were astounded, and newspapers reported her abilities to be beyond human strength. They thought she must be electric or magnetic or perhaps she accomplished the feats through pure animal magnetism. A problem arose when a dime museum owner in Cincinnati filed a lawsuit against the gentlemen of the stock company. The self important Cartersville men immediately sold the remainder of Mattie's contract to a Cincinnati theater man and hightailed it back to Georgia. Mattie's name was never again printed in the Cartersville newspaper. And thus, Mattie Lee Price was forgotten in Cartersville even though she became a very famous Georgia Magnetic/Electric Girl in entertainment circles. She performed in dime museums and opera houses during the winter months and traveled with circuses from April to October. In 1893, just after the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Harry Houdini and his brother were on the same venue with Mattie at the Kohl and Middleton dime museum in Chicago. In his memoirs, Houdini wrote that she was quite possibly the best of The Georgia Wonder girls. The story of Mattie Lee Price weaves through a great variety of places in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, and England. She was billed as a sideshow act in The Robinson Show, The Great Wallace Show and Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth. She was a center ring act in The Walter L. Main Circus and even got her own circus poster. Her friends were bearded ladies, dog faced boys, armless wonders, midgets, and giants. The true story of Mattie Lee Price and the world of dime museums and circuses in the period between 1884 and 1899 was colorful, alive, and amazing.