Dakota Diary 10 Tom Thumb

So, clutching the newspaper, we went back to the hotel and to our room, where we could study the report in full.

Most of the information about his life and work with Mr. Barnum we knew well, so we only skimmed that. We wanted more information - about his death and about what Lavinia was likely to do now

On January 10, 1883, Stratton was staying at the Newhall House in Milwaukee when a fire broke out which was one of the worst hotel fires in American history. More than 71 people died, but Tom and
Lavinia were saved by their manager, Sylvester Bleeker.

Six months later, on June 15th, 1883, he died suddenly of a stroke. He was 45 years old, 3 foot 4
inches tall and weighed 70 pounds. He had become portly in the last years of his life and by the time of his death, he looked quite different from the tiny and slim person he was from his discovery up to the mid 1870s.

“Oh, here, Mattie. It tells stuff about his parents that we didn’t know.”

Stratton was a son of a Bridgeport, Connecticut, carpenter named Sherwood Edward Stratton, who in his turn was the son of Seth Sherwood Stratton and Amy Sharpe. Sherwood married his first cousin Cynthia Thompson, daughter of Joseph Thompson and Mary Ann Sharpe. Charles Stratton's maternal and paternal grandmothers, Amy and Mary Ann Sharpe, were allegedly small twin girls born upon 11 July, 1781, in Oxford, New Haven, Connecticut.

“So he inherited being small from each of his grandmothers. I never knew that.”

She read on:

Born in Bridgeport to parents who were of medium height, Charles was ironically quite a large baby, weighing 9 pounds 2 ounces at birth. The parents were without any concerns as he developed and grew normally for the first six months of his life, at which point he was 25 inches tall and weighed 15 pounds. Then he stopped growing. His parents became concerned when, after his first birthday, they noticed he had not grown at all in the previous six months. They showed him to a relative who served as their family doctor, who offered little hope that the child would ever reach normal height.

By late 1842, Stratton had not grown an inch in height or put on a pound in weight from when he was six months old. Apart from this, he was a totally normal, healthy child. His parents were reportedly
embarrassed by the fact of his diminutive stature. Stratton, however, had several siblings who were of average size. His parents were persons about whom there existed no peculiarity, either in mental or physical organization. His mother attributed her son's dwarfism to the grief she had experienced when the family dog died during her pregnancy.

“How stupid is that!”

“Here is another thing that I didn’t know,” said Cora Sue.

Tom and Lavinia never had a child of their own but, to stimulate public interest, they would appear with a baby represented by Barnum as theirs. The first such baby was an orphan acquired by Barnum, and when he grew larger than Lavinia he was replaced by a succession of babies who were rented to perform with the couple in each country they visited.

“I knew that Tom Thumb was rich, but I didn’t know that he helped Mr. Barnum out. Read this.”

Under Barnum's management, Stratton became a wealthy man. He owned a house in the fashionable part of New York and a steam yacht and had a wardrobe of fine clothes. He owned a specially adapted home on one of Connecticut's Thimble Islands. When Barnum got into financial
difficulty, due to the American Museum fire, Stratton bailed him out. He also owned property in Bridgeport, pedigree horses, and a yacht that he sailed on Long Island Sound. When Barnum lost all of his money in an ill-fated business deal, Stratton showed his loyalty and affection and rescued him by volunteering for another European tour. Yet Tom’s generosity and his display of wealth did not mean that he had the control and skill to manage his fortune. He looked like a millionaire because he spent like one, not because he invested wisely.

“I didn't know Mr. Barnum had lost all his money.”

After Tom and Lavinia married they built a mansion in Middleboro on Plymouth Street. The inside of the mansion was scaled down and the furniture was diminutive in size. They lived in this house when they were not away performing. They had carriages and coaches that were diminutive in size and they used to ride around town that were pulled by Shetland ponies.

Thumb retired quite wealthy on his earnings and led a peaceful, quiet life. He returned to Barnum every so often, and made a couple of world tours, but for the most part he lived out his days happily with his wife. They retired in 1882. He died of a stroke on July 15, 1883. It is expected that more than 10,000 people will attend his funeral. Mr. Barnum says he will put a life size statue of Tom Thumb on top of his gravestone.

“Goodness, 10,000 people. I wonder if Aunt Lillie will go. I hope so.”

There was a personal quote from Lavinia in the paper.

An event happened on January 10, 1883, the remembrance of which has ever since cast a gloom over my life. I allude to the burning of the Newhall House in Milwaukee, with all its accompanying horrors. My dearly beloved Mrs. Bleeker was the only victim of our party. Although her husband rescued her from the flames, she was so badly injured  that she died twelve days afterward. The General never recovered from the shock of that terrible ordeal