Early Carnival Contracting Agent, Manager, and General Director
Harold A. Bushea belongs among the important figures of the formative American traveling midway not because his name appeared above the title of a famous carnival, but because he helped make the organization behind one of those early carnivals work.
Before entering the carnival business, Bushea was already engaged in business life. The 1889 Cleveland city directory listed Harold A. Bushea as a bookkeeper for H. W. Hubbard, residing at 210 Lake, Cleveland, Ohio.
By the end of the 1890s, his career had taken a very different direction.
Frank Gaskill’s Contracting Agent
George Francis Dorman, who had been present during the formative Gaskill years, later identified Bushea as Frank Gaskill‘s first contracting agent. Our accumulated Gaskill research places Bushea among the people who helped build, organize, and operate the early traveling show.
That role was important.
A traveling carnival needed more than attractions. Someone had to secure engagements, negotiate with local committees and sponsoring organizations, arrange the financial terms, and create a route capable of keeping an expensive traveling organization moving.
Bushea’s own 1925 recollection provides an especially important explanation of how Gaskill approached those contracts. Bushea remembered that Frank’s theatrical-management background influenced the agreements he developed for carnival engagements. The traveling organization supplied specified attractions, advertising and show material, while the local sponsoring organization assumed agreed local responsibilities and the financial proceeds were divided according to the contract.
Bushea therefore gives us more than memories of Frank Gaskill. He helps explain the business machinery behind the early organized midway.
Through Success and Failure
Bushea also remembered the difficult second season of the Gaskill organization.
The show traveled east in 1900, encountered serious difficulties and ultimately closed in New York. Gaskill went through bankruptcy. Bushea later recalled that Frank subsequently paid the legitimate claims against him in full.
Frank rebuilt.
According to Bushea’s account, in 1901 Gaskill constructed a new show and booked Percy J. Munday’s animal attraction on percentage. The organization again prospered.
Bushea remained part of the Gaskill story as the organization grew from the modest company that had left Canton in a baggage car into an enterprise capable of operating two traveling units by 1903.
Frank Gaskill Dies
Frank W. Gaskill died on May 24, 1904.
The organization did not.
Mary Gaskill became its owner, and Harold Bushea assumed a central operating role.
Less than a month after Frank’s death, a June 18, 1904, Billboard advertisement identified Harold A. Bushea as General Director of the Gaskill Carnival Company. The company was actively advertising engagements at Chicago, Indianapolis and Toledo.
A July advertisement again identified Bushea as General Director while advertising engagements in Toledo, Logansport and Dayton.
This was not simply an organization finishing a few dates already under contract.
The show continued.
The Great Gaskill Shows
By November 1904, the organization was being advertised prominently as The Great Gaskill Shows.
The advertisement preserved something particularly valuable for the Archive: a management roster.
Frank W. Gaskill was honored as founder. Harold A. Bushea was General Director. William C. Gaskill was Auditor. Other officers included Fred P. Shields as treasurer and William Hanna as superintendent.
The advertisement also documented an active route through Selma, Atlanta, Augusta, Charleston and Savannah.
The Gaskill organization had survived its founder.
Minnesota State Fair
Bushea’s importance extended beyond management of the traveling organization.
By August 1905, The Billboard identified Harold A. Bushea as Director of the Pike at the Minnesota State Fair, where he was advertising for additional first-class shows.
This gives us contemporary documentation placing Bushea directly in the management of one of the significant fair midways of the period.
McKennon later associated Mrs. Gaskill and Bushea with the continuation of the Gaskill organization and with the Minnesota State Fair engagement. Our Archive preserves McKennon’s historical “first organized midway at an agricultural fair” claim as his account while separately documenting the Gaskill company’s presence at the fair.
The Man Who Remembered
Twenty years later, Harold Bushea was still helping preserve the history.
His contribution to the March 21, 1925 Billboard Spring Special provided details about Frank Gaskill, the early organization, its contracting system, the disastrous 1900 season and its rebuilding.
That makes Bushea important to The American Midway Archives in two ways.
He helped build the history, and then he helped record it.
His account, together with those of Mary Gaskill, George Francis Dorman and other early showmen, gives later generations something extraordinarily valuable: testimony from people who actually knew the men, organizations and working methods of the formative American midway.
Harold Bushea’s Place in the American Midway
Bushea’s career illustrates an easily overlooked part of carnival history.
The midway did not move simply because someone owned the attractions. It required contracting agents, general agents, managers, treasurers, construction crews, route men and people capable of turning a collection of attractions into a functioning traveling business.
Harold A. Bushea was one of those men.
He helped Frank Gaskill establish the early organization. He witnessed its setbacks and rebuilding. When Frank died, Bushea stayed. Under Mary Gaskill’s ownership, he became General Director and helped carry the organization forward.
And decades later, he remembered.