A brief history of Somers' 'peanut wreath' ceremony

SOMERS, N.Y. - Most locals know that each April -- around World Circus Day -- a beribboned wreath made of peanuts is ceremoniously placed at the “Old Bet” memorial at The Elephant Hotel in Somers.

But they may not realize that the tradition was started by another famous performing pachyderm, “Old John.”

“Old Bet” was the star of local entrepreneur Hachaliah Bailey’s traveling menagerie in the early 19th century. Billed as the first elephant to tread “American soil,” she was shot dead by an irate farmer while on a tour in Maine.

Bailey constructed the brick building (now the town’s offices) and erected a granite monument in her honor.

John L. Sullivan, the tuskless male Asian elephant’s full moniker, was born around 1860 and lived to the ripe old age of 72.

(Elephants typically live up to 70 in the wild; those in captivity, only about 40.)

“Old John,” who was named after boxer John L. Sullivan, was known for sparring with his trainer using a boxing glove on the end of his trunk.

He later was part of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, aka “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

In April 1922, “Old John” marched 53 miles from Madison Square Garden in Manhattan to Somers to pay tribute to “Old Bet.”

The four-day journey was engineered and promoted by Dexter Fellows, a circus press agent renowned for his hyperbole. According a 1937 account of his death, newspapers of the time dubbed Fellows the “advance courier extraordinaire” of the “Big Top.”

Trudging along at about 5 mph, “Old John” was followed by a car packed with reporters from the city’s leading newspapers, according to an account on the website rhinoresources.com.

There were only about 300 souls in Somers at the time, but a crowd of 2,000 spectators swarmed the wreath-laying ceremony.

After “Old John” retired from the circus, the aged beast babysat for his human colleagues’ kids, was called on to do heavy lifting, and headed up the herd back and forth between the show grounds and train.

He passed away in 1932 from old age or heart failure in Sarasota, Fla., the circus’s winter headquarters.

Ironically, that’s where Fellows was headed when he shuffled off his mortal coil.

Having been in ill health for a year, he still insisted on taking a trip to Sarasota. Fellows only made it as far as Hattiesburg, Miss., before succumbing to typhoid fever and pneumonia, according to newspaper accounts.