Remembering Old Bet the Elephant

 

From Aeon:

In 1806, Hachaliah Bailey, a farmer in Somers, New York, bought an elephant to help plow his farm. He paid $1,000 and named her Old Bet. He soon realised that he could make more money from her as a paid attraction, so he began travelling the country with Old Bet and charging curious onlookers 10 cents for a rare glimpse. Structured around a bluesy country ballad by the US composer Sam Saper, this film from the US animator Lynn Tomlinson recalls Old Bet’s tale from the imagined perspective of the farmer’s dog. Via distinctive handcrafted animations made with clay-on-glass and oil pastels, Tomlinson brings a mournful sense of pathos to the story of the first circus elephant in the United States, while hinting more broadly at the tragic centuries-long history of exotic animal exploitation for the sake of human entertainment.

The story is a true one, though Old Bet was an Asian Elephant, not an African Elephant. 

Hachaliah Bailey bought Old Bet who was the second elephant brought to America and who served as the nucleus of the Bailey Circus, which later merged with P.T. Barnum and then the Ringling Brothers Circus as circuses collapsed and merged. 

Bailey built the Elephant Hotel in Somers, New York, but eventually moved to Northern Virginia, where he founded the area known as Bailey's Crossroads.  Feld Entertainment, which owns the now-gone Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey history, props, name, and associated real estate is headquartered nearby.