New York, New York (BUT NOT FORGOTTEN – EXCERPT #5)

Barnum’s American Museum

Fire at the museum, July 13, 1865.

Barnum’s first presentation at Niblo’s, indeed his first anywhere, was the exhibition of a woman named Joice Heth, a former slave who he claimed was 161 years old, and if that wasn’t impressive enough, had been personal nanny to George Washington.

Crowds flocked to see the aged specimen who, despite the prestige and regard that one might imagine should have been her due if such distinctions had been valid, was in sincerely poor conditi...